‘At Some Point in the 1960s, Hell Disappeared’: Hell, Gender and Catholicism in Post-War England

Autor: David Geiringer
Rok vydání: 2018
Předmět:
Zdroj: Cultural and Social History. 15:255-272
ISSN: 1478-0046
1478-0038
DOI: 10.1080/14780038.2018.1427357
Popis: This article explores changing understandings of Catholic hell in post-war England, focusing on how questions of sex and gender intersected with beliefs in the afterlife. It uses oral testimony from Catholic laypeople alongside the pronouncements of the clerical hierarchy to challenge the pervasive notion that ‘hell disappeared in the 1960s’. Hell did however, change in constitution during the post-war decades, transforming from a material ‘place’ to an abstract ‘state’ in the lay and institutional imagination. Rather than being about a straightforward ‘liberation’ from a coercive theology of damnation, the changing constitution of hell spoke of the way certain religious beliefs became re-categorised in late-modern England.
Databáze: OpenAIRE