Gordon Lynch

This open access book offers an unprecedented analysis of child welfare schemes, situating them in the wider context of post-war policy debates about the care of children. Meer

Progressive, modern societies hold the promise of the triumph of reason and the banishing of primitive, religious impulses to a bygone age. If this statement is orthodoxy to much of Western liberal thought, then Gordon Lynch's On the Sacred is heresy. Meer

Pastoral counselling has had a significant role in the development of the wider British counselling movement over the past thirty years. Yet this role has often gone unacknowledged, and little has been written about the implications of its distinctive identity within counselling. Meer

Re-interpreting Durkheim's theory of the sacred, this book sets out a theory of the sacred for use across a range of humanities and social science disciplines and draws on contemporary case study material to show how sacred forms--whether in 'religious' or 'secular' guise--continue to shape social life in the modern world. Meer