This detailed study deals with causes and consequences of secularization: political, social and cultural. Beginning with politics, Hugh McLeod asseses the French Third Republic, the classic example of the systematic secularization of public institutions. But even in France the secular state was opposed by a powerful Catholic counter-culture, and in Germany and England ties between church and state remained much closer. He examines the part played by different social groups and considers how the religious attitudes of workers differed from those of the middle class. How women differed from men, and Catholics from Protestant or Jews. Changes in individual belief and practice are also examined.