| Abstract: | In this paper we will report some of the findings of a study of the rise and fall of the Young Christian Worker movement in England and Wales. From its origins in the industrial north in the 1930s, the movement reached its peak in the early 1950s. Since then it has declined and yet many of the current generation of Catholic activists were strongly influenced by its ideology, ecclesiology, and inductive approach to finding Christian responses to social issues. We explore from a social movement perspective what social factors contributed to its early growth. The context for its decline in recent decades are the major post-war social and post-Vatican religious changes which have transformed English Catholicism. We argue that the two stages of the decline correspond closely to the passage through adolescence and the young adult years of two successive generations in the post-war years, the 'baby boomers' and the 'baby busters'. |
