Dear All,

We would like to invite you to the following conference: 'Material Religion in Modern Britain and her Worlds' June 8th and June 9th. The conference will be held on the University of Glamorgan Cardiff campus.

This two-day symposium will explore material cultures of religious belief and faith in modern Britain. As Birgit Meyer, David Morgan, Crispin Paine and S. Brent Plate have recently pointed out, studying material objects provides us with an alternative evidence base in the study of modern religious belief (Birgit Meyer et al; 2011). Yet few attempts have yet been made to do so. While many scholars now concede that Britain’s religious landscape is more varied and rich than the narrative of secularisation allows, a tendency remains in the historiography of religion to privilege written sources over material manifestations of religion. This means that all sorts of belief practices have been overlooked. Analysing the material past, we propose, will provide scholars with new and exciting ways of understanding the apparently fraught relationship between modernity and religion.

As Jane Bennett points out, objects are culture constructions and lead active lives in our social and cultural landscape. Religious historians have too often been guilty of adopting an implicitly Protestant binary (set up in opposition to Catholicism) in which words are privileged over objects. Yet everyday cultures of Protestant belief in Britain relied on all kinds of material cultures which sustained religion in an age of uncertainty.

Attached to this email you will find the conference programme. The conference is free but you are asked to register by emailing  [log in to unmask] If you have any questions please do not hesitate to email me ([log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>) or Tim Jones ([log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>).

Dr Lucinda Matthews-Jones

Lecturer in Modern British History

Liverpool John Moores