Secular Conversions

• List of figures and tables; Acknowledgments; List of acronyms; Introduction; 1. Politics, institutions, and secularization; Part I. Forging the Nineteenth-Century Settlement, 1800–80: 2. State-building and secularization in comparative perspective; Part II. The Nineteenth-Century Settlement in Transition, 1880–1945: Preface to Part II; 3. Slow secularization in the permeable American state; 4. Settlement stability in the insulated Australian state; Part III. Forging the Twentieth-Century Settlement, 1945–2000: Preface to Part III; 5. Secularization and the courts in postwar America; 6. Desecularization and electoral institutions in postwar Australia; Part IV. Implications: 7. Conclusion; Epilogue. Toward a twenty-first century settlement?; Index.

'Secular Conversions leaps beyond overly general secularization debates to demonstrate how specific institutional conditions and political processes have shaped quite different accommodations of religion and education in two modern nation-states. This tour de force of comparative sociological history should inspire new ways of engaging one of the central contradictions of modernity - allowing for free institutions and practices of religion while maintaining the independence and secularity of public institutions.' John R. Hall, University of California, Davis