Martin Camroux

In his enthronement sermon as archbishop of Canterbury in 1942 William Temple famously declared the ecumenical movement to be «the great new fact of our era.» In this book Martin Camroux tries to face honestly how hope met reality. By the end of the century the enthusiasm had largely dissipated, the organizations that represented it were in decline, and organic unity looked further away than ever. One significant ecumenical merger took place in Britain–the creation in 1972 of the United...

Can't you hear those little bells tinkling? Down on your knees–"they're bringing the sacraments to a dying God," wrote Heinrich Heine in 1834. It took a while but today it is happening. Across the Western world the traditional picture of God is dying, and institutional religion collapsing. Today we are trying something never done before, living with no agreed narrative that tells us who we are and with a materialist view of life. It isn't enough. An idea of God may have died but...