Synopses & Reviews
The Anglican church has been no stranger to controversy during its history but the debates raging at the moment are among the hottest it has known. This book asks some prominent Anglicans why they are still in the church and what they love about it. Representing Anglicanism in all its range and diversity, the contributors are positive about the church and their place in it, and show appreciation, rather than resentment, of a Church that is broad enough to contain those of opposing views. This is a personal, partial and affectionate (though by no means uncritical) glimpse of the Anglican Church. >
Synopsis
The Anglican church has been no stranger to controversy over its long history but the debates raging now are among the very hottest it has known, threatening to split the Anglican Communion.What better time, then, to ask a dozen prominent Anglicans why they are still in the church and what they love about it?
Table of Contents
Emeka Anyaoku, President of the Royal Commonwealth Society (formerly Secretary-General of the Commonwealth) disentangling Anglicanism from colonialism
Anne Atkins, journalist, on familial loyalties
Elizabeth Butler-Sloss, judge, on law, and the freedom to make independent judgments
Frank Field, MP, on Church and State, schools and heritage
Nicky Gumbel, author of Questions of Life, on why it's a blessing that the Alpha course had Anglican origins
Ian Hislop, satirist, in a long tradition of Anglican agnostics
PD James, author, on how the Church of England shaped her as a writer
Stephen Layton, conductor, encountering God in Spirit-filled music
Edward Lucas, journalist and foreign correspondent, home thoughts from abroad: rediscovering the Church of England on foreign soil
Hugh Montefiore, RIP, bishop and environmentalist, visionary convert to Anglicanism
Rupert Sheldrake, biologist, on heresy, and why Science needs a ReformationJohn Stott, theologian and evangelical, on the foundations of Anglicanism, and why evangelicals should remain in the Church of England Fay Weldon, novelist, on the Age of Original Sin -v- the Age of Therapy
Andreas Whittam Smith, First Church Estates Commissioner and Founding Editor of The Independent, on what he'd be prepared to die for
Lucy Winkett, Canon Precentor of St Paul's Cathedral, on Anglicanism from a cathedral perspective, and being a woman priest in the Church of England