In CHRISTIANITY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, John A. Hardon examines those major issues and ideas which are shaping the development of Christianity in this century. The author carefully probes the many far-reaching changes these turbulent decades have brought about in such areas as: faith and unbelief; worship and ministry; authority
and freedom; church and state; marriage; morality; and the ecumenical movement.
Father Hardon explains how advances in science, especially the behavioral sciences, have encouraged a new interpretation of history which has led to the urge for confrontation and instant change now affecting Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox thought and institutions. But while he recognizes that these changing attitudes and practices threaten to do away with all the values of the past, he does not discard their influence on the future shape of Christianity. He foresees a new depth and vision of the Christian faith such as the world has not seen since the age of the Apostles. "I believe the past seven decades," he writes, "are among the most significant since apostolic times. They promise to become the watershed that divides two eras of Christendom, the centuries of dismemberment and the age of reunion."