The Church of England still seemed an essential part of Englishness, and even of the British state, when Mrs Thatcher was elected in 1979. The decades which followed saw a seismic shift in the foundations of the C of E, leading to the loss of more than half its members and much of its influence. In England today `religion' has become a toxic brand, and Anglicanism something done by other people. How did this happen? Is there any way back? This `relentlessly honest' and surprisingly entertaining book tells the dramatic and contentious story of the disappearance of the Church of England from the centre of public life. The authors - religious correspondent Andrew Brown and academic Linda Woodhead - watched this closely, one from the inside and one from the outside. That Was the Church, That Was shows what happened and explains why.

Winner of the Holyer an Gof Award 2022 (Leisure and Lifestyle) An illustrated guide to one hundred of the finest early Cornish stone crosses, dating from around AD 900 to 1300. These characteristic features of the Cornish landscape are splendid examples of their type, exhibiting a wide geographical spread and a certain weather-beaten beauty. The medieval stone crosses of Cornwall have long been objects of curiosity both for residents and visitors. This is the first ever accessible volume on the subject, combining detailed description and discussion of the crosses with information on access, colour images and suggestions for further reading. An approachable but academically rigorous work, it includes analysis of the decorative designs and sculptural techniques, accompanied by high-quality photographs which illustrate the subtleties of each cross, often hard to discern in situ. Ancient and High Crosses of Cornwall offers an ideal introduction for the general reader but will also prove essential to local historians, landscape historians, archaeologists and anyone working in the area of Cornish studies or connected with the Cornish diaspora. DOI: https://doi.org/10.47788/NKIP4746

The memoir of popular BBC Radio 4 SATURDAY LIVE presenter and former member of the Communards, the Reverend Richard Coles. 'I love @RevRichardColes SO MUCH' Caitlin Moran FATHOMLESS RICHES is the Reverend Richard Coles's warm, witty and wise memoir in which he divulges with searing honesty and intimacy his pilgrimage from a rock-and-roll life of sex and drugs in the Communards to one devoted to God and Christianity. The result is one of the most unusual and readable life stories of recent times, and has the power to shock as well as to console.

Society in Britain has changed dramatically in the last 30 years, especially in terms of our understanding of community and how we relate to one another. One of the responses of the Church has been to plant new churches and create 'fresh expressions' of church; churches that relate to our changing context. With a new foreword by the Rt Revd Graham Cray, this detailed, practical and well-researched report: gives an overview of recent developments in church planting; describes varied and exciting 'fresh expressions' of church; offers practical help and advice; looks candidly at where lessons can be learned; proposes a framework and methodology for good, effective church planting; includes recommendations to make possible the visions of a vibrant future Church. Each chapter has a set of questions and challenges to help local parish churches engage with the issues.

In the early seventeenth century, as the vehement aggression of the early Reformation faded, the Church of England was able to draw upon scholars of remarkable ability to present a more thoughtful defence of its position. The Caroline Divines, who flourished under King Charles I, drew upon vast erudition and literary skill, to refute the claims of the Church of Rome and affirm the purity of the English religious settlement. This book examines their writings in the context of modern ecumenical dialogue, notably that of the Anglican-Roman Catholic International Commission (ARCIC) to ask whether their arguments are still valid, and indeed whether they can contribute to contemporary ecumenical progress. Drawing upon an under-used resource within Anglicanism's own theological history, this volume shows how the restatement by the Caroline Divines of the catholic identity of the Church prefigured the work of ARCIC, and provides Anglicans with a vocabulary drawn from within their own tradition that avoids some of the polemical and disputed formulations of the Roman Catholic tradition.

Contemporary Issues in the Worldwide Anglican Communion offers unique perspectives on an organisation undergoing significant and rapid change with important religious and wider sociological consequences. The book explores what the academic research community, Anglican clergy and laypeople are suggesting are critical issues facing the Anglican communion as power and authority relations shift, including: gender roles, changing families, challenges of an aging population, demands and opportunities generated by young people, mobility and mutations of worship communities; contested conformities to policies surrounding sexual orientation, impact of social class and income differences, variable patterns of congregational growth and decline, and global power and growth shifts from north to south.

John Henry Newman was one of the most eminent of Victorians and an intellectual pioneer for an age of doubt and unsettlement. His teaching transformed the Victorian Church of England, yet many still want to know more of Newman's personal life. Newman's printed correspondence runs to 32 volumes, and John Henry Newman: A Portrait in Letters offers a way through the maze. Roderick Strange has chosen letters that illustrate not only the well-known aspects of Newman's personality, but also those in which elements that may be less familiar are on display. There are letters to family and friends, and also terse letters laced with anger and sarcasm. The portrait has not been airbrushed. This selection of letters presents a rounded picture, one in which readers will meet Newman as he really was and enjoy the pleasure of his company. As Newman himself noted, 'the true life of a man is in his letters'. Please note, earlier versions of this edition misattributed a review quote from Etudes newmaniennes to the Newman Studies Journal. This has now been corrected.

Charles Miller's rigorous and sensitive examination of Richard Hooker's theology makes a valuable addition to the field of study of the cleric, one of the founding theologians of modern Anglicanism. Miller examines Hooker's works in detail, leading the reader through different facets of his vision of God: creation, Scripture, the sacraments, and practices of Christian devotion. Hooker's theology challenges an increasingly time-bound, relativistic approach to doctrine and truth; his sources were as wide, as ancient, and as modern as Hooker could make them. Miller's thoughtful analysis is informed throughout by an understanding of the context of Hooker's theological development against the backdrop of continental Calvinism and the remnants of Roman Catholicism in England. The growth of interest in Hooker among specialists has been accompanied by an abandonment of the serious study of Hooker's thought among theological students, clergy and theologians. Miller's work addresses this lack; Hooker's insights must not be forgotten in the daily distribution of theological food to Christian people. A study which attunes readers to Hooker's particular theological 'voice' and teaches its value both in his own context and as a present-day interlocutor, this volume will be of great interest to Christians and theological students alike. Charles Miller is an Anglican priest who has taught theology, Anglican studies and spirituality in seminaries and universities in the United States and the UK. His books include: 'Toward A Fuller Vision: Orthodoxy and the Anglican Experience', 'Praying the Eucharist: Reflections on the Eucharistic Experience of God', and 'For the Gift of the World: An Introduction to the Theology of Dumitru Staniloae'. Since 2006 he has been Team Rector of Abingdon and Vicar of St Helen's Church in the Diocese of Oxford. 'Charles Miller has produced an amazingly comprehensive volume, covering a vast number of subjects and treating them with mature scholarship and erudition. He draws new attention to classical understandings of Anglican theology, formulated many years ago by More and Cross and subsequently embellished by Olivier Loyer and others. The next generation of Hooker scholarship will needs make frequent and grateful reference to the seventeen chapters of Miller's far-ranging volume.' J. Robert Wright, The General Theological Seminary, New York City.

In spite of the centrality of the threefold orders of bishop, priest and deacon to Anglicanism, deacons have been virtually invisible in the contemporary Church of England. 'Inferior Office?' is the first complete history of this neglected portion of the clergy, tracing the church's changing theology of the diaconate from the Ordinal of 1550 to the present day. Francis Young skilfully overturns the widely held belief that before the twentieth century, the diaconate was merely a brief and nominal period of probation for priests, revealing how it became an integral part of the Elizabethan defence of conformity and exploring the diverse range of ministries assumed by lifelong deacons in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Lifelong deacons often belonged to a marginalised 'lower class' of the clergy that has since been forgotten, an oversight of considerable importance to the wider social history of the clergy that is corrected in this volume. 'Inferior Office?' tells the story of persistent calls for the revival of a distinctive diaconate within the Victorian Church of England and situates the institution of deaconesses and later revival of the distinctive diaconate for women, as well as subsequent developments, within their wider historical context. Set against this backdrop, Young presents a balanced case both for and against the further development of a distinctive diaconate today, offering much to further discussion and debate amongst clergy of the Church of England and all those with an interest in the rich tapestry of its history.

The Anglican Communion stands at a crossroads. Some want Anglicanism to be exclusive of gays, especially gay priests and bishops. The Windsor Report is seen as the means of achieving this by centralising the Anglican Communion, and bringing wayward provinces, like ECUSA, to heel. In this collection of essays, distinguished academics from the UK and the US offer lively, thoughtful and scholarly critiques of the Windsor Report. What unites this collection is the view that Windsor does not provide a way forward for Anglicanism. Contributors write from a variety of standpoints, including justice for gays, opposition to centralisation, and/or the need for legitimate moral diversity within Anglicanism. This timely collection offers a means of grappling with what has become one of the most controversial issues within Anglicanism, and also a way of reflecting on the future shape of the Church, and how inclusive that Church is going to be. CONTRIBUTORS: Marilyn McCord Adams is Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Oxford and Canon of Christ Church, Oxford. Thomas Breidenthal has been Dean of Religious Life and of the Chapel at Princeton University since January 2002. Anthony M. Coxon is currently Honorary Professorial Fellow at the University of Edinburgh and Emeritus Professor of Sociological Research Methods, University of Wales. Robin Gill is the Michael Ramsey Professor of Modern Theology in the University of Kent. Sean Gill is Senior Lecturer in Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Bristol. Elaine Graham is the Samuel Ferguson Professor of Social and Pastoral Theology at the University of Manchester. Rowan A. Greer is Professor of Anglican Studies Emeritus at Yale Divinity School. Charles Hefling is a Faculty Member of the Theology Department and the Honours Programme at Boston College, Massachusetts; Editor of the Anglican Theological Review; and the Examining Chaplain to the Bishop of Massachusetts. Carter Heyward is the Howard Chandler Robbins Professor of Theology at Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Lisa Isherwood is Professor of Feminist Liberation Theologies at the College of St Mark & St John, Plymouth. Gareth Jones studied Theology at Cambridge University, completing his PhD on Bultmann in 1988. Philip Kennedy studied music at the University of Melbourne before joining the Dominican Order in 1977. Richard Kirker is Director of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, a post held since 1979. Christopher Lewis is Dean of Christ Church, Oxford. Andrew Linzey is a member of the Faculty of Theology in the University of Oxford, and Senior Research Fellow of Blackfriars Hall, Oxford. George Pattison is Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford. Carolyn J. Sharp is Assistant Professor of Old Testament at Yale Divinity School. Vincent Strudwick is currently Chamberlain of Kellogg College and Associate Chaplain of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. Adrian Thatcher taught Theology at the College of St Mark & St John, Plymouth, from 1977 until his retirement in August 2004.

C19 diary, correspondence and sermons cast light on the Evangelical movement and its relationship with the Church of England. Between the end of the eighteenth century and the end of the nineteenth evangelicalism came to exercise a profound influence over British religious and social life - an influence unmatched by even the Oxford movement. The four texts published here provide different perspectives on the relationship between evangelicalism and the Church during that time, illustrating the diversity of the tradition. Hannah More's correspondence during the Blagdon controversyilluminates the struggles of Evangelicals at the end of the eighteenth century, as she attempted to establish schools for poor children. The charges of Bishops Ryder and Ryle in 1816 and 1881 respectively reveal the views of Evangelicals who, at either end of the nineteenth century, had a forum for expressing their views from the pinnacle of the church establishment. The major text, the undergraduate diary of Francis Chavasse [1865-8], also written by a future bishop, provides a fascinating insight into the mind of a young Evangelical at Oxford, struggling with his conscience and his calling. Each text is presented with an introduction and notes. Contributors ANDREW ATHERSTONE, MARK SMITH, ANNE STOTT, MARTIN WELLINGS. MARK SMITH teaches at King's College, London; STEPHEN TAYLOR is Reader in Eighteenth Century History, University of Reading.

Modern missional movements have often viewed the historic Christian traditions with suspicion. The old traditions may be beautiful, the thinking goes, but they're too insular, focused primarily on worship and on the interior life of the church, and not looking outward to evangelism and good works. In Liturgical Mission, Winfield Bevins argues that the church's liturgy and sacramental life are in fact deeply missional. He explores the historic practices of the Christian church, demonstrating how they offer a holistic framework for everyday Christian discipleship and mission in the twenty-first century. The result is a book that not only invites all Christians back to the historic liturgy of the church, but also invites those already in liturgical churches to rediscover the missional life that has too often remained latent in their own traditions.

Important texts in the Church's history collected together in one volume. This first miscellany volume to be published by the Church of England Record Society contains eight edited texts covering aspects of the history of the Church from the Reformation to the early twentieth century. The longest contribution is a scholarly edition of W.J. Conybeare's famous and influential article on nineteenth-century "Church Parties"; other documents included are the protests against Archbishop Cranmer's metropolitical powers of visitation, the petitions to the Long Parliament in support of the Prayer Book, and Randall Davidson's memoir on the role of the archbishop of Canterbury in the early twentieth century. Stephen Taylor is Professor in the History ofEarly Modern England, University of Durham. Contributors: PAUL AYRIS, MELANIE BARBER, ARTHUR BURNS, JUDITH MALTBY, ANTHONY MILTON, ANDREW ROBINSON, STEPHEN TAYLOR, BRETT USHER, ALEXANDRA WALSHAM

This title illustrates the changes taking place in 25 Oxfordshire churches to meet modern worship needs and to enable them to be used for community use.

The author defines Yesterday's Radicals as nineteenth-century Anglican Broad Churchmen and Unitarians, and aims in his book to demonstrate the affinities between them and the manners in which they influenced each other. The Broad Churchmen constituted the progressive wing of the Anglican Church, who were interested in science, Biblical criticism, a rational approach to religion, and who were leaders in the attempt to relate the Church's teaching to the new thoughts and conditions of the nineteenth century. But they were not alone. The Unitarians were possessed of a similar spirit, and came to regard reason and conscience as the criteria of belief and practice. This book demonstrates the growing respect between them, as they tried to grapple with the problems of their day. It lucidly takes the reader through the ramifications and complexities of Biblical criticism, and discusses the answers given to the problems of Biblical inspiration and miracles, amongst others. It demonstrates how Unitarians and Broad Churchmen affected each other, and that much of which is now taken for granted in enlightened theological circles was developed by Yesterday's Radicals. The author traverses territory not previously opened up in this way, for the affinity between these groups has hitherto not been the subject of analysis. This pioneering study was awarded the Earl Morse Wilbur Prize for Historical Research.

The two Books of Homilies, along with the Book of Common Prayer and the Ordinal, have been basic documents of the Church of England, and are valuable in showing Anglican doctrine during the Reformation, as well as being of considerable historical importance. The first book, published in 1547, early in the reign of Edward VI, was partly though not entirely the work of Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, and the inspiration appears to have been his. This was intended to raise the standards of preaching by offering model sermons covering particular doctrinal and pastoral themes, either to be read (particularly by unlicensed clergy) or to provide preachers with additional material for their own sermons. The success of the venture led Bishop Edmund Bonner, who had contributed to Cranmer's book, to produce his own Book of Homilies in 1555, during the reign of Queen Mary. The Second Book of Homilies, published in 1563 (and in a revised form in 1571) appears in turn to have been influenced both by Cranmer's and by Bonner's books. The present edition brings together the all three books, edited and introduced by Revd Dr Gerald Bray.

Donald Allchin was an ordained priest in the Church of England, a historian, ecumenist, and contemplative theologian. The essays, poems, and memoires in this book represent what his Christian vision has brought forth in the lives of the contributors. You will meet poets, historians, bishops, archbishops, monks, priests, lay persons, and scholars. You will taste the rich ecumenical dialogue between Allchin's Anglican heritage, Eastern Orthodox Churches, the Roman Catholic Church, and churches of the Reformed Traditions, including Allchin's friendships and correspondence with Thomas Merton and the Romanian Orthodox theologian Dumitru Staniloae. Readers will gain insights into Allchin's interpretation of the Anglican Tradition and his emphasis on the value of monastic solitude and community for the lives of modern Christians. You will enter Allchin's journey into the lives, poetry, saints, and holy places of the Welsh spiritual tradition. And this is only a taste of his legacy. In Allchin's words,

Henry VIII's Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, is credited with a pivotal role in the English Reformation. As well as playing a leading part, together with Henry's Chancellor, Thomas Cromwell, in securing the separation of the Church in England from the authority of the Roman Church and the Pope enabling Henry both to marry his mistress, Anne Boleyn, and to become Supreme Head of the Church of England, he also began, prior to Henry's death in 1547, to introduce liturgical reforms into the Church. In the reign of Henry's son, Edward VI, Cranmer was considered the prime creator of the 1549 Prayer Book, the first all-English service book with reformed tendencies. Within three years, a more radical and reformed book was produced and authorised at the end of 1552. the question and issue is whether Cranmer was directly responsible for this second book which took the Church of England in a more overtly protestant direction. Many argue that he was. This book suggests that he was not.