Sneering or Celebration? Some Responses to Secularisation in Cambridge Anglicanism in the 1980s and Beyond

Human beings are contingent creatures bounded by actual historical and social situations. This is not to imply determinism but it suggests that, paradoxically, wisdom begins with acknowledging that there is no view from nowhere and so places and times matter. If this is so, then any conceptual scheme must be located and analysed in its particularity. As no military plan survives first contact with the enemy, so no sociological theory will go unscathed when confronted with the messiness of historical contingency. Social science applied to the actual behaviour of people will be an inexact science. Thus, the focus here is on one historical episode in the development of Cambridge Anglicanism as the phenomenon of secularisation was encountered.