Welsh Journals

D T W Price, A History of the Church in Wales in the Twentieth Century t Penarth, Church in Wales Publications 1990, pp xii + 75. ISBN 0 85326 026 5. £ 6.50. The author states his aims with admirable clarity: "This short work is intended to provide an outline of the history of the Church in Wales in the twentieth century". After a glancing reference to the origins of Christianity in Wales, and a few paragraphs about the growth of nonconformity ("during the first half of the Nineteenth Century, a non- conformist chapel was opened every eight days"), we are taken into the intricate details of dis-establishment. With hardly a pause for breath, and with a sideways look at border parishes, we find ourselves in Shrewsbury in December 1914, where the future organisational structures of the Church were hammered out. There are references which those in the know will recognise as pregnant with meaning, and it hardly requires the skill of a diplomat to see that those early days must have been full of intrigues and clashes of temperament. Archdeacon Green of Mon- mouth threatened, at one point, to "take his bag and walk out of the door". His bluff was not called, so presumably he (and his bag) stayed, and, D T W Price "Since then the bishops of the Church in Wales have had very great powers within, the Church." There's plenty about bishops in. the book; about their longevity in the early years; about their links with the church overseas, about their ability or inability to speak Welsh. Bishops abound, from the Rt Revd Watkin Herbert Williams "with his pink cheeks and 'mutton chops' to Archbishop Noakes' use of the phrase 'the front line'. And there are pictures of bishops, in 1920 looking solemn and severe, in 1990 smiling and be-suited. Lay-men are also mentioned. Lord Sankey is given a moving accolade: "his real memorial is in the active life and witness of the Church in Wales in itself"; and Frank Morgan who "settled the administration of the Church on firm foundations", but who is credited with only working in 'reasonable harmony' with Archbishop Edwards and Bishop Owen. Such judicious descriptions leave one speculating about the hidden rows. This is one of the weaknesses of the book committees, constitutions, ecumenical affairs and finance are all very well, but what makes the Church fascinating, any church, are the clashes of style, the conversations of giants, the hopes of. the humble. No doubt, D T W Price has enough material to hand to construct an enthralling companion volume: 'not-the-church-in-Wales'. Meanwhile, what we have from his meticulous, pen and twinkling eye is a view of an ecclesiastical institution, struggling to establish an identity, wrestling with huge social forces; and