World Views and Worldly Wisdom

Emiel Lamberts (1941), professor emeritus of contemporary history at KU Leuven, is an international expert in the political and religious history of Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. His work and the central themes in his research are the starting point in 'World views and worldly wisdom'. No less than eighteen leading international researchers put different aspects of his work in the spotlight. A recurring theme, however, is the attraction and repulsion between the Roman Catholic Church and modernity in Europe between 1750 and 2000. The ambivalent relationship with modernity is therefore the leitmotiv of the first part of this volume, whereas the second part focuses on the repositioning of the Church and the tensions between religion, ideology and politics. In this way the volume reflects Lamberts? fascination for the history of political institutions as well as his research on Christian democracy. The contributions address in a comparative way and from a transatlantic viewpoint this broad period of time in history, which gave rise to different social movements and different models of society in Belgium and elsewhere.