ABSTRACT
The 1960s constituted a decade when many of the Christian Churches began to reflect upon the nature of their mission and the shape of their organisations, in particular the need to make their organisations intelligible to an increasingly secular audience in the second half of the twentieth century. Every major Church has within the past decade established some form of commission or committee to examine its pattern of organisation and the possibility of appropriate reform. The Church of England has commissioned the Paul Report and the Morley Report, and the change to synodal government. The Church of England has in some ways been particularly sensitive to the pressure of a secular society: ‘in the country as a whole though not everywhere to the same degree, the Church of England is facing a loss of membership and the attrition of its power and influence’.
