MILTON's OVIDIAN EVE (Ebk)

This book considers the changing nature of both religion and welfare in Europe and the subtle but increasingly significant relationships between these fields. Together with a companion volume Welfare and Religion in 21st century Europe: Volume 1 it is concerned with the function of majority churches as agents of social welfare in eight European societies (Finland, Norway, Sweden, England, Germany, France, Italy and Greece). Building on to the case studies set out in Volume 1, this book takes a thematic approach in order to explore the connections between religion and welfare from three different, but complementary perspectives: those of sociology, gender and theology. More specifically, the authors ask new questions about the relationship between the religious and the secular, and between church and state, and the implications of both for the process known as secularization. Looking carefully at the roles of women and men in both the churches and welfare, the authors ask why women predominate so noticeably in both spheres at least in the delivery of service. They are also concerned with the role of theological discourse in these ongoing and complex questions. How in other words does religious belief operate as an independent variable in different European societies and how might this change in the coming decades? This book brings together a wide variety of questions which are of great topical importance in modern Europe: the changing place of religion and its increasing presence in the public sphere, the anxieties of European populations about welfare and the centrality of gender to both issues. The policy implications are huge.