Religion and Rural Society: South Lindsey, 1825-1875, by James Obelkevich.

Religion And Rural Society is an academic book from the 1970s. Using South Lindsey in rural Lincolnshire as his ‘testing ground’, James Obelkevich examines the interplay of Christianity and Capitalism in Victorian England. He follows the rise of a class-based society, as profit and individualism replace the old hierarchies and sense of community in village life.

Obelkevich’s study also covers the response of the Anglican Church to the threat of Methodist revivalism and discusses the residual folk religion ‘with its roots deep in the pre-Christian era’. According to a review written at the time, this book ‘gives the impression that the author has got the Lincolnshire mud on his boots, as well as the dust of the Record Office in his lungs’.

Published by Clarendon Press in 1976.

Good condition. Binding intact. No dust jacket. Flyleaf clipped.