Catholics in Contemporary Britain: Faith, Society, Politics

Catholics in Contemporary Britain showcases findings from a wide-ranging, empirical study of Catholics living in Britain. It offers a sociologically-informed study, placing the contemporary Catholic community in the wider contexts of their society and the global faith of which they are a part. The book has been animated by a set of compelling broader questions : Who are the Catholics in Britain? How do they engage with their faith and with the Church? What do they think about issue within, and the leadership of, their Church? What are their views on wider social issues and of the party-political landscape? The study is thematically broad in scope, focusing on demography, religiosity (addressing the three 'Bs' of 'believing', 'belonging', and 'behaving'), social-moral issues, church leadership and schooling, and party support and voting behaviour. The book presents a rich and fascinating demographic, religious, and attitudinal profile of Britain's Catholics in the 21st Century.

About the Author :
Ben Clements was awarded his PhD in 2008 from the Department of Government at the University of Essex. He started his academic career as a research fellow at the School of Education, University of Birmingham, working on survey research projects in the area of visual impairment and disability. In 2010, he obtained a Lectureship in Politics at the University of Leicester and has been working there ever since, being promoted to Associate Professor in 2017. He has published three research monographs over 40 peer-reviewed articles, mainly in the fields of political science and the sociology of religion. Stephen Bullivant holds professorial appointments at St Mary's University in London, and the University of Notre Dame in Sydney. He has doctorates in theology (Oxford, 2009) and sociology (Warwick, 2019), and has published widely in both fields. Recent books include Mass Exodus: Catholic Disaffiliation in Britain and America since Vatican II (OUP, 2019), The Cambridge History of Atheism (2021; co-edited with M. Ruse), Nonverts: The Making of Ex-Christian America (OUP, forthcoming), and Vatican II: A Very Short Introduction (OUP, forthcoming; with S. Blanchard).

Review :
Bringing into attention an interesting topic and offering a detailed analysis that is useful both from the sociological, historical and theological point of view, Ben Clements and Stephen Bullivant's book entitled: Catholics in Contemporary Britain published at Oxford University Press in 2022 is not only an useful tool in the sociological field, but also a lecture that could be considered useful for any category of reader interested in understanding the way how Catholicism can be encountered in Britain. This is a solid book of statistics, the most up to date in forty years. It gives an accurate picture of the skeleton of the British Catholic Church. As in most quantitative research, it offers numbers rather than intellectual questions, yet number have their own irreplaceable value. This is clearly a landmark study on the Catholic community in Britain which cannot be overlooked by those working in sociology of religion, pastoral theology, or political science.