Religion and Change in Modern Britain

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Agreed syllabus: A local syllabus for religious education produced by a conference within a local authority in England or Wales consisting of committees representing the Church of England (in England only), other denominations and religions, the local authority and representatives of teachers. Agreed syllabuses are used in community (formerly county) schools and in voluntary controlled schools.

Ajahn: Senior Theravada Buddhist monk.

Anglicanism: A Protestant movement that split from the Roman Catholic Church in the sixteenth century, for which the Archbishop of Canterbury is regarded as the symbolic head; some Anglicans consider themselves Anglo-Catholics and continue to value links with Roman Catholicism.

Animism: Sometimes interpreted as ‘believing in spirits’ but more usefully refers to ‘treating the world as a community of persons most of whom are not human’.

Ardas: Prayer.

Aroras: Caste of urban Sikhs.

Babas: Revered old men.

Baby boom generation: Refers to that born, roughly, between the end of the Second World War and the mid-1960s when there was a marked increase in the birth rate in Britain and other Western societies.

Believers – real or nominal: Sometimes people distinguish between the intense sincerity of ‘real’ believers and others who belong to a particular tradition in name only.

Bhakti: Devotion (bhakta = devotee).

Bhatras: A small sub-group among Sikhs linked together by kinship networks.

Biasakhi: Sikh new year.

Calvinist, Presbyterian, Reformed (Protestant): Religious ideas and practices inspired by the French theologian John Calvin (1509–1564), who is considered a founder of Presbyterian or Reformed expressions of Protestant Christianity. Calvinism stresses the sovereignty of God in all things and the importance of Christians living in accordance with the teachings of the Bible, in alliance with the Protestant Reformation’s (ca. 1517–1648) emphasis on sola scriptura (by scripture alone). Key ideas of Calvinism include the total depravity of humankind, unconditional election (those whom God has chosen or elected to be saved will be saved), limited atonement (only those chosen by God will be saved; others will go to hell as a result of their sin), irresistible grace (the chosen will be unable to resist God’s calling to salvation) and perseverance of the saints.

Caste: A system of social hierarchy based on birth, religion and culture.

Catechesis: Education in the faith, usually of young people.

Celebrated selves: A way of thinking about individuals known for being celebrities.

Charismatic: An expression of Christian belief which places particular emphasis on the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Commonly associated with Pentecostalism, but increasingly found in other Christian traditions (where it is often called Charismatic renewal or neo-Pentecostalism).

Civil religion: When a religion infuses a society, so much so that the ‘god’ of that religion is identified with the ‘civil unit’ itself. Civil religions provide a people, group, nation or state with a semi-sacred quality, which in turn affects ‘identity’, including how people see themselves religiously and politically.

Civil religion: When a society becomes sacred, or a religion infuses a society to such an extent that the religion inheres in the ‘civil unit’ itself; a people, group, nation or state imbued with a semi-sacred quality; a ‘chosen people’ (see Chapter Nine for further use of the concept).

Civil society: Usually refers to the level of governance between the state and the governed. It is located in organizations such as non-governmental organizations (NGOs), charities, foundations and professional associations which exercise influence and help shape the formal layers of governance.

Community cohesion: Coined in the Cantle Report (2001) to describe the effect desired by public policymakers of building up networks of trust and reciprocity in local areas. The key aim is to avoid the ‘parallel lives’ which Cantle identified.

Conservative religion: Religious movements and ideologies which emphasize an authentic expression of religious tradition over its modern re-interpretation tend to hold conservative social positions regarding gender, sexuality and individual autonomy, and engage in various forms of religious and political activism often oriented towards demonstrating the truth of their core convictions.

Controversy: An event and debate which has reached public attention, especially in the media, usually with negative reactions. What is of particular interest here is why certain events are taken as controversial, and what such controversies tell us about the wider social values – such as about religion and specific religious groups.

Creationism: Belief that God created the world according to the ‘seven day’ account in the book of Genesis in the Bible, and not by evolution.

Crowley, Aleister: An influential and controversial British occultist and magician (1875–1947).

Cults: A term now often used interchangeably with ‘New Religious Movements’ (see below). Religious groups which tend to be controversial for attracting intense loyalty outside the boundaries, or on the fringes, of mainstream religious traditions.

Cultural turn: A movement across a range of academic disciplines in the humanities and social sciences that treats culture as a key concept through which social life can be analyzed.

Culture: Structures of meaning through which people experience their interior and embodied lives, their social worlds and their physical environments.

Dalits: Members of Indian lower-caste groups. Formerly ‘untouchables’ or ‘Scheduled castes’; term in common use in India to describe the rise of subaltern caste groups.

Deism: Religion focused upon a distant God who oversees the world but does not intervene in it.

Deobandi: A conservative Islamic reform movement established in India in the nineteenth century in the context of British colonial rule.

De-privatization: A process whereby religion, which had been confined to the private sphere, returns to civil society and/or public life.

Deras: Gatherings; centres.

De-secularization: A process whereby religious decline is reversed and religion ‘re-emerges’, giving rise to a ‘post-secular’ era.

Dharma: Order – ritual, cosmic, social; duties, correct social behaviour/the teaching of the Buddha.

Diaspora: A people spread out beyond their homeland; the Sikh diaspora are found in Europe, North America, the Middle East, Australia and South East Asia.

Differentiation: A process, often thought to be coterminous with modernization, whereby social functions are distributed to autonomous spheres with their own logics and resources – e.g. education, law, politics, religion.

Diwali: Festival of Lights, occurring each autumn; variously associated with gods Rama and Krishna and goddess Lakshmi.

Durkheim: Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), French sociologist who argued that religion is where a society holds up an ideal of itself and worships itself; the sacred is ‘Society’.

Ecumenism: A movement towards Christian unity, or unity amongst those believing in Jesus Christ.

Emotions: Certain strong and influential feelings such as fear or disgust that are often named and managed by each society in its own way. Sometimes distinguished from moods that are longer-lasting and more pervasive.

Endogamy: The institutional practice of marriage between people from the same social or cultural categories.

English Reformation: The sixteenth-century period, much influenced by Protestant ideas in Europe, especially concerning the authority of the Bible and of the role of faith in salvation, when the Church of England, after separation from the Catholic Church and the Pope as its head, developed as a state church with the monarch as its earthly head.

Esotericism: Tradition using religious practices for self-knowledge and improvement, emphasizing imagination, correspondence between seemingly different things (e.g. stars and humans), a living cosmos, and the possibility of change.

Established church: A church which has an established, constitutional relationship with the state, also called a ‘state church’ and sometimes a ‘national church’.

Ethnicity: The identity and culture shared by people who claim descent from common ancestors.

Evangelicalism: A pan-denominational movement within Protestantism (with roots in the Reformation, but which has flourished in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries) which emphasizes the authority of the Bible, a commitment to personal conversion and sharing the gospel.

Exeter Hall: A purpose-built building for mainly religious meetings on the Strand in London, completed in 1831 and demolished in 1970; particularly associated with meetings of Protestant groups and societies, often with philanthropic and reforming aims, e.g. anti-slavery.

Exogamy: The institutional practice of marriage between people from different social or cultural categories.

Fragmented leadership: No single institution or person can claim to speak for all Jews in Britain.

Fundamentalism: A dedication to the fundamental theologies of faith; in the Christian case, this means the rejection of teachings and practices which are contrary to the Bible.

Fusers: People who fuse putatively distinct religious traditions, such as Quaker-Pagans, Buddhist-Christians, or Jewish-Witches. Such people have hybrid religious identities.

Gelug: School of Tibetan Buddhism.

Geshe: Senior teacher in the Gelug school.

Gulbenkian Report: Originating in a study group by the Gulbenkian Foundation in 1966 (the first report appeared in 1968) to look at the nature and future of community work in the UK. This was intended to be focused around training but inevitably spread its net much wider into structural critiques.

Gurdwara: Sikh place of worship.

Guru Granth Sahib: Sikh holy book.

Hadith: The sayings of the Prophet Muhammad.

Halakhah: Jewish religious law.

Halal: Means ‘lawful’ or ‘permitted’ – often used to refer to meat or foods that are ‘lawful’ for Muslims to consume.

Haredi (plural: haredim): Strictly Orthodox Jews.

Haredi demographic growth: A reference to the dramatic changes occurring as a result of very high birth rates among haredi Jews.

Holocaust (Shoah): The attempt by the Nazis during the Second World War to wipe out European Jewry, which resulted in the systematic murder of an estimated six million Jews.

House of Lords: The House of Lords is the upper chamber of the British Parliament. During the last 100 years, its powers have declined relative to those of the elected lower chamber, the House of Commons. For most of its history, membership of the upper chamber was confined to ‘Lords Temporal’, aristocrats who held hereditary peerages, and ‘Lords Spiritual’, bishops of the Church of England. In 1958 a system for appointing ‘Life Peers’ was introduced. Life peers are men and women appointed to the House, on the recommendation of the Prime Minister, but who do not receive hereditary titles. Hereditary membership of the House of Lords was abolished in 1999, although some ‘hereditaries’ were allowed to remain as ‘working peers’. Further reform of the House is likely. If it becomes a wholly elected chamber, Church of England bishops will cease to be members. If it becomes a wholly or partly appointed chamber, bishops may remain, but almost certainly in reduced numbers and probably accompanied by the representatives of other faiths.

Indigenization: Coined by Paul Johnson to identify a process among contemporary indigenous people in which groups, practices and events are made relevant to what is perceived to be local, traditional and specific, rather than global, general and open to all, the term can be applied to some alternative spiritualities when they emphasize particular places, specific times and received traditions.

Islamophobia: The ‘othering’ of Islam and Muslims; in the case of the media, their persistent and pervasive negative portrayal in news and other genres.

Jamaat-i Islami: A South Asian Islamic reform movement established by Maulana Mawdudi in 1941 in India.

Japji Sahib: Sikh morning prayer.

Jats: Agriculturalists caste group.

Jewish continuity: The success which Jews have had at assimilating into British society has prompted concerns about whether a Jewish population will exist here in the future.

Jihad: The struggle in the way of God; in Islamic jurisprudence it has come to mean war that fulfils legal requirements of shari’a.

Kacha: Short drawers.

Kagyu: School of Tibetan Buddhism.

Kahnde di pahul: Tempered with steel.

Kanga: Comb.

Kara Parshad: Sacramental food given at a gurdwara.

Kara: Steel bangle.

Karma Kagyu: Main branch of the Kagyu school.

Kesh: Unshorn hair.

Khalsa: The Sikh brotherhood.

Khatris: Caste of urban Sikhs.

Kirpan: Steel dagger.

Kirtan Sohila: A section of the Guru Granth Sahib recited in the evening.

Koan: Puzzling questions which lead beyond logical responses.

Langar: Communal kitchen.

Levée en masse: Mass conscription to a national army (as in the French Revolutionary Wars).

Liberal religion: Religious movements and ideologies which see religious tradition as needing to be re-interpreted in line with modern knowledge and standards of critical thinking, support liberal values of freedom, diversity and equality, and tend to engage with broader issues of social justice.

Liturgy: Public or communal worship carried out according to particular rituals, such as a mass.

Magisterial Reformation: A general term which includes the various strands of the sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation which achieved greatest power and which were less politically radical than those of the ‘Radical Reformation’, most notably Lutheranism and Calvinism (also called Presbyterianism).

Maintained schools: In the UK, schools under the control of local councils (local authorities in England and Wales and the Department of Education in Northern Ireland). In England and Wales, maintained schools include voluntary schools, some of which (voluntary aided schools) are partially funded by religious bodies. Maintained schools do not include academies, a minority of secondary schools in England funded directly by central government, but having semi-independent status.

Mandir: Shrine or temple.

Matrilineal descent: Part of the complex definition of the term ‘Jewish’. A person is Jewish if their mother is Jewish.

Media: Some distinguish between primary media (e.g. speaking, singing), secondary media (e.g. writing, painting), and electronic media. This final category is commonly divided between ‘old’ media (e.g. television, radio and film) and ‘new’ media (e.g. computers, iPhones). With digitization and convergence of communication technologies these categories are blurring. The media is sometimes used as a collective singular noun (e.g. ‘The media changes religion’), though it is more correctly used as a plural noun, reflecting the many different forms of media and individuals who produce and use different media.

Mediatization: The process by which particular aspects of social life are increasingly performed through public and social media, which in turn changes those aspects of social life in particular ways.

Micro-, meso- and macro-level: The hierarchy of relative levels at which social life can be analyzed. The focus of micro-level analysis is on individuals, events or small groups; the meso-level focuses on conditions, processes or activities occurring at an intermediate level; and the macro-level focuses on conditions, processes and activities occurring at the level of entire organizations, institutions or societies.

Mind-Body-Spirit: A complex of holistic traditions blending interests in physical, spiritual, mental and other kinds of wellbeing.

Mindfulness: Mental alertness, awareness of the present moment.**

Monism: A philosophical position which holds that all reality is ultimately one.

Multiculturalism: A very widely used word, often taken to mean many different ideas and processes (both negative and positive). Broadly used here not to describe any particular social programme or ideology, but rather to describe social contexts of and responses to cultural diversity, and, with that, responses to religious diversity.

Myth of homogeneity: The illusion that there is a single ‘Jewish community’ in Britain; it actually consists of many denominations and unaffiliated Jewish sub-groups.

Nam: God’s name.

Nam Japana: Mediation on the divine name.

Namdhari: Follower of the Namdhari sect.

New Age: Sometimes used as if it were a synonym of all alternative spiritualities, sometimes specifically of Mind-Body-Spirit traditions, and only sometimes used by people as the correct name for what interests them. It implies a specific belief in a change of eras or the anticipating of an ‘Aquarian’ age of harmony to replace the current, more dualistic and divided age.

New Commonwealth: A post-imperial ‘family of nations’ which had once been under British control. The Queen is the ceremonial head of the Commonwealth.

New religiosity: A term that refers to a range of different types of religious groups and practices. Broadly, it means any form of religion that has emerged in recent decades, particularly through innovation and/or conversion. It is usually distinguished from other forms of religion that are new to Britain, such as religions that are established through groups migrating and settling, and also the extant forms of Christianity that have adapted to changes in contemporary society. In practice, however, the boundaries between these three areas are hard to distinguish.

New Religious Movements (NRMs): Mobilizations of people and resources in pursuit of religious ideas that are relatively new and marginal to those of mainstream religious traditions. Also referred to as ‘cults’ (see above).

Nit Nem: Daily rule.

Non-religion: The position of non-identification with any religion, typically in Britain of those previously of a Christian heritage, and including those with agnostic, atheist, secularist or freethinking outlooks.

Nyingma: School of Tibetan Buddhism.

Ordination of women: The Church of England has allowed women to become priests since 1992. The Catholic and Orthodox Churches do not agree with this but most Protestant denominations do.

Paganism: A new religion, drawing on ancient religions, focused on the celebration of nature (understood in various ways) rather than on transcendence.

Pali: The language of Theravada Buddhist texts.

Panj Piare: The five disciples.

Panth: The Sikh community.

Party whip: The ‘whips’ are party officials who try to ensure that MPs toe their party’s line in Parliamentary votes. The term also describes the instructions issued by those officials. Occasionally, especially on ‘conscience issues’, parties do not impose a whip so that their MPs have a ‘free vote’.

Pentecostalism: A Christian movement based around the present-day reality of ‘spiritual gifts’, such as healing, prophecy and speaking in tongues, which traces its history to US-based revivals around the turn of the twentieth century.

Pesach: The Jewish festival of Passover, celebrating Israel’s freedom.

Phenomenological: An approach to the study of religions requiring the setting aside of the researcher’s presuppositions, and empathy with the position of the insider. The approach also requires the capacity to intuit common themes or categories across religions.

Presbyterian: System of church government popular in Scottish and Northern Irish Protestantism, in which a form of democratic election by communicant members of ministers and lay elders obtains in congregations, district presbyteries and national general assemblies, and in which no permanent leaders are usually countenanced, leading to annual election of ‘moderators’.

Presbyterianism: A form of Protestantism associated with Calvinist theology, articulated by John Knox through the Scottish Reformation.

Primary schools: In the UK, normally schools for children below the age of 11. They are usually divided into an infant and a junior section.

Privatization: The process whereby religion is removed from public life into a sphere of private life.

Proselytizing: Actively trying to bring about conversion, e.g. through preaching.

Puja: Worship, either at home or in a temple.

Qualitative methods: Procedures and techniques for collecting and analyzing information about the meanings and values that pervade social and cultural life, generally involving ethnographic enquiry (interview and participant observation).

Quantitative methods: Procedures and techniques for collecting (often by questionnaire) and analyzing information expressed in the form of numbers.

Radhoswami: Follower of the Radhoswami sect.

Radical Reformation: A general term which refers to a wide variety of religious reform movements of the Protestant Reformation (starting in the sixteenth century) which were more radical in their politics (more critical of the status quo, and often more egalitarian) than the movements of the ‘Magisterial Reformation’. For example, Anabaptists and Quakers.

Ramgarhia: Member of the Ramgarhia caste.

Ravidasi: A follower of guru Ravidas.

Recusant: In the history of England and Wales, the ‘recusants’ were those who remained faithful to the Catholic Church after the English Reformation and refused to attend services of the Church of England.

Rehat Maryada: Sikh code of conduct.

Religion-online/Online-religion: ‘Religion-online’ is where religious believers or religious institutions use their websites as a way of attempting to communicate about their beliefs and practices, often a one-to-many form of communication. ‘Online-religion’ is where individuals or groups adapt their communicative practices in the wake of the new communication technologies, often a many-to-many form of communication. These practices are now commonly merging.

Religious monopolies: The context of how within contemporary Britain certain religious groups (particularly the Christian churches) have a key and socially defining role – not only in terms of numbers of supporters, but more importantly in dominating values and debates about religion in society.

Representation: (In a media context) the act of representing people, things or events in words and images, and in accordance with media values, rhetoric and mission.

Rinpoche: Senior teacher in Tibetan Buddhism.

Roshi: Senior Zen teacher.

SACRE: The abbreviation for Standing Advisory Council for Religious Education. In England and Wales SACREs have a consultative and advisory function within local authorities in relation to religious education. Their composition mirrors that of Agreed Syllabus Conferences (ASCs).

Sacred: A category which can refer to ‘Society’ (e.g. a sacred monarchy), or to sacred Nature, or to varied ‘special’ phenomena (practices, texts, sites, etc.), or non-negotiable principles.

Sakya: School of Tibetan Buddhism.*

Samatha:(calming) Buddhist meditation practice used to quieten the mind.

Sampradaya: Literally something which is handed down; the teaching of a particular tradition; the teaching tradition itself.

Sangat: Gurdwara congregation.

Sangha: Community of Buddhist monks.

‘Sant’: ‘Saint’; especially of those in various north Indian traditions which emphasized devotion to a Lord without qualities (nirgun bhakti); grouped together as ‘the Sant tradition’.

Sants: Preachers/holy men.

Sea of Faith Network: A network of people created after a 1984 TV series and books by Cambridge Theologian Don Cupitt who view religion as a product of human imagination.

Second wave feminism: Feminism of the 1960s–1980s which is contrasted with a first wave in the late nineteenth century and a third wave from the 1990s.

Secondary schools: In the UK, usually schools for young people aged 11 to 18.

Sectarianism: Discrimination or hatred against people or groups because of their religious affiliation. Sectarianism can become systemic and deeply embedded in some societies, reflected not only in overt violence or bigotry but also in everyday patterns of prejudice such as avoidance of people from different religions and/or strained relationships between people of different religions.

Secularism: Ideologies advocating secularization.

Secularity: The condition of being secular.

Secularization:The process whereby religion declines in personal and social significance. Secularization theories offer different descriptions and explanations of the process.

Securitization: The process by which, and the mechanisms whereby, certain groups, individuals, discourses, etc. are framed as security risks.

Seva: Service.

Shabad: Word of god; hymns.

Shabbat: The Sabbath or day of rest (Saturday).

Shari’ah: Literally means ‘way to water’ but refers to the Divine laws and principles that

Social construction: The idea that the meanings attributed to religion are forged, in part, by social interactions and processes.

Social factors: Indicators of the extent to which religion is shaped by, and in turn helps to shape, the social characteristics of individuals, processes and situations.

Social perspectives: Ways of looking at religion in terms of its mutual relations with patterns of social life, structures, organizations, cultures and processes.

Sodar Rahiras: Sunset liturgy.

Soto: Zen Buddhist school emphasizing sitting meditation.

Statism: An approach to government which introduces planned interventions at a national level through economic and social policy to try to shape the experiences and lives of citizens; to be contrasted with privatization, laissez faire and free-market approaches which stress the ‘rolling back of state’.

Sub-culture: Cultural practices, resources and structures of feeling which are experienced by participants as existing in a critical relationship to a dominant and often hostile cultural mainstream.

Sunnah: The actions or example of the Prophet Muhammad.

The Troubles: A period of political violence, concentrated mainly in Northern Ireland but including violent incidents in Great Britain, the Republic of Ireland and parts of Europe, between the late 1960s and the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Conflicting parties disagreed about the constitutional status of Northern Ireland (whether it should be part of the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland) and the degree of economic, social and political inequality between Catholic nationalists and Protestant unionists in Northern Ireland. Actors in the violence included state forces such as the British Army and paramilitary groups such as the nationalist/republican Irish Republican Army and the unionist/loyalist Ulster Volunteer Force, amongst others. More than 3,500 died during the violence.

Theoretical perspectives: Frameworks of ideas that claim to explain or interpret religion.

Theravada: Oldest surviving School of Buddhism.

Umma: The global Muslim community.

Ummah: Means ‘community’ or ‘nation’ and refers to the worldwide community of Muslims.

Urban friars: Christian movements of the later medieval period which were associated with the growing cities of Europe, and which advocated a radical form of discipleship and imitation of Christ, including poverty – e.g. the Franciscans. They were absorbed into the Catholic Church.

Vihara: A Buddhist monastery.

Vipassana: (insight) Buddhist meditation practice used to reach greater understanding.

Voluntarism: Situations where you choose your religion rather than belonging to it automatically by birth.

Voluntary schools: These are mainly state-funded schools in England and Wales which have a religious character. In voluntary aided schools, religious bodies pay a modest contribution towards buildings and maintenance, while the state pays the rest, plus staff salaries. Voluntary controlled schools are completely funded by the state, but still have a religious character.

Wesley, Charles: A key figure and hymn writer in early Methodism.

Westphalian Settlement: The Treaty of Westphalia (1648) finalized the situation, still largely present today, where there is a majority religion acquired by birth in a particular territory.

Zazen: Sitting meditation in Zen Buddhism.

Zen: Japanese school of Buddhism based on meditation.

Zionist: Adherence to Zionism, the political doctrine proclaiming the right of Jews to self-determination in their own national homeland.

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