For God and country: Butler's 1944 Education Act

This postsecular study on Conservative and Christian thinkers' intellectual ferment leading to England's 1944 Education Act examines how politicians and educationalists promoted Christian-civic humanism as the educational philosophy underlying the Act. It argues that Religious Education and secondary and further educational proposals were meant to go hand-in-hand to shape a national educational system that promoted an English national identity based on ideals of tradition and progress for the war-weary nation. The 1944 Act's historic Religious Education mandate, however, was overshadowed by the hopes and fears for "secondary education for all" in the postwar, class-conscious English society.

The book focuses on the work and collaborations of politicians, educationalists, and intellectuals with special attention to three men: Minister of Education R. A. Butler, educationalist Fred Clarke, and sociologist Karl Mannheim. As Christian, political, and social thinkers these men worked in public-and behind the scenes-to create the landmark Education Act in order to bolster postwar England through appeals to God and country.