'The Secularized Sabbath' Revisited: Opinion Polls as Sources for Sunday Observance in Contemporary Britain
Titel:
'The Secularized Sabbath' Revisited: Opinion Polls as Sources for Sunday Observance in Contemporary Britain
Auteur:
Field, Clive D.
Verschenen in:
Contemporary British history
Paginering:
Jaargang 15 (2001) nr. 1 pagina's 1-20
Jaar:
2001-03-01
Inhoud:
With due recognition of their methodological limitations, commercial public opinion polls conducted among quota or random samples of adult Britons are used to chart changes in attitudes to, and in activities taking place on, Sunday during the late twentieth century. Although principally conceived as a guide to the raw data, the article takes William Pickering's notion of 'The Secularised Sabbath' as the conceptual backdrop against which these changes are measured. Some evidence is found for the loss of the distinctive character of Sunday, both in religious and socio-cultural terms. In part this is attributable to the progressive legislative deregulation of Sundays and to altered patterns of employment. However, for the majority, if no longer the whole, of the population Sunday still remains a day set apart from the remainder of the week, by an emphasis on family, rest, relaxation and pleasure.
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