One of the most welcome features of the contemporary Christian scene is the drive towards ecumenism. This is not only because of the potential achievement of a single united Church which alone makes sense but because the gradual removal of these virulent, self-inflicted wounds of denominational partisanship is likely to free Christians to face alternative urgent challenges. The picture is sombre and no one who really cares about the Christian faith can have any doubts that the majority of our fellow human beings find organized religion as we have known and practised it an irrelevancy. We have now reached the stage when we can no longer take refuge behind stoutly held rationalizations that this massive withdrawal of interest is the responsibility of every one except ourselves. Such anodynes are no longer effective because no one outside the Christian circles believed in them before and now we, too, have rejected them. Stripped of our customary but gradually ineffective defences, we find ourselves in a whirlpool of multitudinous and often contradictory ideologies, explanations and solutions for our difficulties. Like a person who is recovering from concussion, the Christian Church is experiencing the world round it with hazy, dimmed and often blurred reactions desperately longing, at times, to return to the tranquillity of unconsciousness.