ABSTRACT
The need to disentangle the truths of Christianity from over-literal thought and to recognise afresh the inward and spiritual nature of religion had begun to be recognised by the 1940s by certain theologians, chiefly Tillich in America and Bultmann and Bonhoeffer in Germany. Those who were not theologians were conscious of a conflict between the scientific view of the world which coloured their thoughts and Christianity as it was popularly expounded. The Bishop of Woolwich in his later book The New Reformation? argues that the duty of religious people at present is to cease to think theologically altogether and to think anthropologically instead. Christian practices began to disappear from everyday life. How far Bible reading and family and private prayers declined is difficult to estimate since there is little real evidence of how widely they were practised.
