Why was it that the numbers in religious orders fell so dramatically in the 1960s? Thomas Merton writes of the huge expansion at the Abbey of Gethsemani in the 1950s following the WW2, and the popularity of his autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain also contributed to the numbers wanting to join. When Ralph Marten (Society of the Sacred Mission), went to Kelham in 1957, he found it a place bursting with life. Twenty-four men in the novitiate, thirty professed brothers in the House and about one hundred students preparing for ministry, plus another thirty aged 16-18 preparing for theological training. And then, suddenly, no one wanted to be in religious orders anymore …

There’s a general agreement about the combination of reasons for the dramatic decline.  One was the modernisation of society in the 1950s and Ralph Martin writes about this in the UK.

‘The benefits of the National Health Service became accessible to all, slums were torn down and better housing, if still not altogether satisfactory, replaced them. Unemployment went down and the standard of living rose consistently; central heating, TV and paid holidays, all became commonplace. … and fewer and fewer of the ancient landscapes were left standing. … All the country’s former producers had become consumers.’

 The idea of sacrifice began to seem slightly odd, and those in enclosed communities were no longer see as admirable, but rather ‘objects of suspicion’. Ideas about the ideals of religious communities and loyal service were no longer taken seriously. The book Honest to God by Bishop John Robinson struck a chord with many, and, Martin writes the young ‘just disappeared from our pews … what we had to say now was incomprehensible, or unbelievable, and certainly irrelevant to the lives our young folks were living and the choices they had to make’. Neither trying to keep abreast of the times, nor clinging ever more obsessively to traditions and customs brought in new people. The electric dish washer and electric floor polishers, reducing the number of services, and jettisoning the habit when not on duty didn’t work either. At Kelham, influenced by the popular charismatic movement the monks tried extempore prayer:

‘… many experienced it as a kind of intoxication, but others found it excruciatingly embarrassing and subversive of our way of life … in the end charismatic prayer was a divisive force in the community … we never really learned how to integrate the new freedom and confidence of charismatic prayer with the liturgical round of daily offices and mass which were still at the hub of our daily life.’

The next attempt to change came with encounter groups and following a course set up through the Church of England, there were attempts to break through the formality and the inhibitions that had marked community life where you kept your place.

‘We were now going to be open, honest and free with each other … The old Fault Chapter statements such as “on Tuesday I broke a cup” and “on Wednesday I slept in and was absent from mass” … were no longer satisfactory …and …now replaced with “Why have you never liked me?” … “Why do you never listen?”

Unsurprisingly this didn’t work either, and it’s noted that some people were seriously damaged by it. With hindsight these are now seen by Martin as a sign of the uncertainty and anxiety about the future. ‘In our perplexity we scrambled about ready to try anything that came along’.