Introduction

Memory captures how her work has contributed to a further understanding of the cultural role of religion, as memory and practice, in contemporary European societies. Modernities capture her engagement with the complexities of the relationship between religion and modernity, a theme discussed throughout her career. As Davie is not an ordinary scholar, so is this book not a conventional 'festschrift' in the sense of commemorating a senior member of an academic discipline towards the end of her career. She has argued that modernity, like secularization, cannot be understood as a linear or one-way process but has always included both change and continuity, and requiring attention to the varieties of social and cultural context. Agree or disagree with Davie's analyses or conclusions, she has set a style and a standard to which scholars have needed to respond.