ABSTRACT
Religion, despite arguments about secularization, is not disappearing but continues to be politically, socially and culturally signifi cant in the twentyfi rst century. In this book we argue that religion, specifi cally Christianity, was an abiding infl uence among children of British or Anglo societies throughout the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth. Furthermore, we argue that the complexities of this infl uence are best understood in the context of specifi c temporal, spatial and cultural settings. This was precisely because there were signifi cant differences between the continents and societies included under the rubric of ‘British’ or ‘Anglo’ world. Here we use these terms interchangeably to denote those societies that historically were either included within the ambit of the British Empire (both settler colonial and colonized) or that had signifi cant ‘Anglo’ origins (such as the United States of America). At the same time we acknowledge that there was tremendous variability within each of these groupings, as well as continuities; and that Britain and North America in particular were not contiguous in terms of patterns, ideologies, theologies and cultural contours. The longerterm impact of religion on children and young people in these societies is non-exclusively evident, for example, in: educational, social welfare and philanthropic work; the participation for religious reasons of large numbers of Christian young men participating in two world wars, alongside the resistance of a signifi cant Christian minority; and the sustained numbers of young men and women employed as home and foreign missionaries. Juvenile religious institutions and infl uences were positively and negatively central to each of these.
