R. Tudur Jones argues that many of the social, cultural and religious issues that would be important in the late 20th century and early 21st century in Wales were already extant a century earlier and that in understanding that period we can learn something of our own time.

R. Tudur Jones (1921-98) was the most prolific and important of all the church historians produced in Wales during the twentieth century. Though ordained an Independent (Congregational) minister, he spent most of his life as professor of Church History and then principal of the Bala-Bangor Theological College in Bangor. He was the author of numerous scholarly books and articles. His major, two-volume study, "Faith and Crisis of a Nation (Ffydd ac Argyfwng Cenedl)," is considered his chief work and was published between 1981 and 1982. It appears here in English for the first time.Robert Pope is Lecturer in Contemporary and Applied Theology, Department of Theology and Religious Studies, University of Wales, Bangor.