The various branches of the Christian Church throughout Europe have faced many challenges since the end of World War II, both internally - in the structure and organization of the Churches and their complex relationships with each other, and externally - in the declines of conventional faith in the modern world and the continuing problems of Church-state relations. In this final volume in the Pelican History of the Church, Owen Chadwick presents a wide-ranging survey of modern Churches, touches upon developments which they share, such as falling attendance in both western and eastern Europe and those which are distinctive, from the continuing strength of the Catholic Church in Poland to the difficulties of the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union, from visionaries in Italy to controversies over the use of the Latin mass in France, the continuing debates over abortion in the Catholic Church and the ordination of women in the Protestant Churches. Professor Chadwick shows how, even in countries where church attendance and formal observation are minority practices, the Churches have remained powerful forces in society and politics from World War II to the dawning of glasnost.