The secularization process in western society, first clearly discernible in the Italian Renaissance, reached a certain plateau at the beginning of the twentieth century. Whatever else might be meant by “the secularization process,” it meant at least, and means in these pages, the gradual deposition of religion from almost every structure and dimension of society except, perhaps, the most private and personal. To thoughtful individuals possessed of mature religious convictions secularization sometimes seemed to portend the end of religion generally: not by law or sword, but simply by social absorption. To meet this challenge, not by denouncing the secularization process nor modernity in general, but simply by sharing their own thoughts on religion and what its role might or should be in the newly secularized western world, a group of prominent London-based men formed in 1904 the London Society for the Study of Religion. The pages which follow are a study of this Society's origins.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.