This book considers the work of Charles Taylor from a theological perspective, specifically relating to the topic of ecclesiology. It argues that Taylor and related thinkers such as John Milbank and Rowan Williams point towards an "Aesthetic Ecclesiology," an ecclesiology that values highly and utilizes the aesthetic in its self-understanding and practice. Jamie Franklin argues that Taylor's work provides an account of the breakdown in Modernity of the conceptual relationship of the immanent and the transcendent, and that the work of John Milbank and radical orthodoxy give a complementary account of the secular from a more metaphysical angle. Franklin also incorporates the work of Rowan Williams, which provides us a way of thinking about the Church that is rooted in a material and historical legacy. The central argument is that the reconnection of the transcendent and the immanent coheres with an understanding of the Church that incorporates the material reality of the sacraments, the importance of artistic beauty and craftsmanship, and the Church's status as historical, global, and eschatological. Secondly, the aesthetic provides the Church with a powerful apologetic: beauty cannot be reduced to the presuppositions of secular materialism, and so must be accounted for by recourse to transcendent categories.

A short guide to the origins, structure and values of the Churches of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Paul Avis explains and clarifies the history and theology involved, and introduces concepts in a structured way, making the book clear to those who may be coming to these issues for the first time. It is also an invaluable aide-memoire and reference tool for the specialist, presenting a clear outline of the structure, form, function, disposition and beliefs of the Church. The 2nd edition is more up-to-date in its examples and refers to developments such as Fresh Expressions, women bishops and the Anglican Covenant, and is also more reader-friendly, with questions for reflection or discussion and suggestions for further reading.

The Anglican conflict over homosexuality has drawn worldwide interest and divided the church. However, conflict within Christianity is not new. This book traces the steps by which the crisis emerged, and reveals the deeper debates within the church which underlie both the current controversy and much earlier splits. William L. Sachs contends that the present debate did not begin with opposition to homosexuality or in advocacy of it. He argues that, like past tensions, it originates in the diverging local contexts in which the faith is practiced, and their differing interpretations of authority and communion. In the aftermath of colonialism, activists and reformers have taken on prominent roles for and against the status quo. The crisis reveals a Church in search of a new, global consensus about the appropriate forms of belief and mission.

F. D. Maurice (1805-72) was one of the most controversial thinkers of mid-nineteenth century Britain. Born a Unitarian, he left Cambridge without a degree rather than compromise his principles. As an Anglican theologian, he uneasily combined Unitarian ideas with the teaching of the Establishment. Sacked from King's College, London, for questioning popular teaching about everlasting punishment, he led a movement to improve working men's education. Yet although Maurice came from a Unitarian family and counted leading Unitarians as his friends, their influence on his work has never been seriously examined. The purpose of this new book is to look at his life and teaching in the light of Unitarianism. Maurice's faith had a distinctly Christological emphasis, but he continued to value his Unitarian heritage. His concern with the Fatherhood of God and the dignity of the human race owes much to his family background. Dr. Young's study opens with a compact history of Unitarianism during the lifetimes of F. D. Maurice and his father, a Unitarian minister. A series of biographical sketches draws on hitherto unpublished material to set Maurice's work in its historic context. Final chapters compare the central themes of his theology with the teaching of his Unitarian contemporaries.

The essays in this book mark the tercentenary of the birth of Bishop Joseph Butler, the leading theologian of the Church of England in the 18th century and also an important moral philosopher. Thirteen distinguished contributors cover the full range of Butler's theological and philosophical writings--from his Christian apologetic against the deists to his discussion of the role of conscience in the moral agent--as well as setting them in their historical context and suggesting their relevance to contemporary religious and philosophical issues. At a time when there is a renewed interest in Butler's thought as well as in the theological positions he was opposing, it is both timely and appropriate that these detailed studies should not be made available. The Bishop of Durham has written a Foreword introducing the volume.

For some thirty years before the First World War, the Church of England maintained a mission of help to the Assyrian Church of the East (popularly known as the Nestorian church) in its then homeland, a corner of eastern Turkey and north-western Persia. The Mission had a controversial history. At home, not everyone could appreciate the rationale of a mission which was to aid an obscure and heretical body and which strictly forbade any conversions from this body to the Anglican church. In the field, the missionaries had to do battle with xenophobic governments, with rival American and French missions, and with the Assyrians themselves, whose confidence proved difficult to gain. In some respects the Mission was unsuccessful, but it had notable accomplishments, especially in scholarship and in ecumenical diplomacy. Besides being the history of a Victorian missionary society, the present study deals in some detail with the history of the Assyrians in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - both as the survival of an ancient church with hierarchy, liturgy, and theological formulas, and as an ethnic minority in the Middle East. Illustrations and maps enhance the value of the book as a source for the history of the time and place. This is the first study of the relations between the church of England and the Church of the East, and is based on largely unpublished documents in English and Syriac.

This is a study of the rise of English Arminianism and the growing religious division in the Church of England during the decades before the Civil War of the 1640s. The widely accepted view has been that the rise of puritanism was a major cause of the war; Nicholas Tyacke argues that it was Arminianism - suspect not only because it sought the overthrow of Calvinism but also because it was embraced by, and imposed by, an increasingly absolutist Charles I - which heightened the religious and political tensions of the period. Almost all English Protestants were members of the established church. Consequently, what was a theological dispute about rival views of the Christian faith assumed wider significance as a struggle for control of that church. When Arminianism triumphed, Puritan opposition to the established church was rekindled. Politically, Charles and his advisers also feared the consequences of Calvinist predestinarian teaching as being incompatible with `civil government in the commonwealth'. For this paperback edition, Dr Tyacke has written a new Foreword taking into account recent scholarly debate on the subject.

Compiled originally as a supplement to the Church Hymnary Third Edition, this work caters for a variety of tastes and styles. Alongside favourite classic hymns and modern choruses, it contains African spirituals and Taize and Iona chants.

An important contribution to the history of 19th-century English liberalism and post-reform politics, this book argues that the Whig party was dominated by a new generation of politicians after 1832 who actively sponsored legislation designed to transform the constitution from an exclusively Anglican document to a non-sectarian, yet Christian one. Brent demonstrates that this concern for religious toleration and the preoccupation with ecclesiastical issues were central to Whiggery in this period, and that the questions raised during these years were posed only to dominate Victorian politics for the generation to come.

In this remarkable and candid memoir the former Archbishop of Canterbury recalls his life and his spiritual quest; this is the first time in history that an Archbishop of Canterbury has written his autobiography. 'Know the Truth' tells George Carey's story from growing up in Dagenham to his experiences in the RAF in the early 1950s, of how he was to become Bishop of Bath and Wells and thereafter attained the position of Archbishop of Canterbury. Utterly sincere and told with warmth and compassion, 'Know the Truth' shares George Carey's story of marriage, family and friendship as well as addressing the wider political aspects of his time at Lambeth.

A scholarly edition of The London Diaries of William Nicolson, Bishop of Carlisle, 1702-18 by Clyve Jones and Geoffrey Holmes. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

This book examines the various contexts - historical, social, cultural, and ideological - which have shaped the modern efforts of the Anglican tradition at self-understanding. The author’s thesis is that modernity and world mission have changed Anglicanism in ways that are deep and pervasive, just as other Christian traditions have also been profoundly affected by worldwide extension. In the case of the Anglican tradition, however, a distinctive way of relating Christianity to local culture and a distinctive kind of indigenous leader produced a church identity different from other forms of Christendom. Dr Sachs’ aim is to contrast Anglicanism both with the style of Roman Catholicism and with the characteristically Protestant emphasis upon individual conversion apart from concern for the Church and its tradition.

Die Untersuchung geht der Frage nach der Vereinbarkeit unterschiedlicher ekklesiologischer Konzeptionen innerhalb der Kirche von England im 19. Jahrhundert sowie den daraus erwachsenden Chancen und Grenzen fur den heutigen oekumenischen Dialog nach. Die jeweiligen Positionen werden zunachst rekonstruiert, auf ihre Unterschiede und Gemeinsamkeiten hin analysiert und im Anschluss daran daraufhin befragt, inwiefern es eine inhaltliche Grundlage fur ihre Einigung als Teile der einen Kirche von England gibt. Abschliessend wird anhand oekumenischer Basisdokumente der Gegenwart der inhaltliche Niederschlag der einzelnen Konzeptionen im Blick auf die Verwendung unterschiedlicher ekklesiologischer Paradigmen im Dialog untersucht. So lasst sich zeigen, wie hierbei Elemente aller Positionen funktionalisiert werden, ohne dass es zu einer echten Vermittlung zwischen den verschiedenen Grundausrichtungen kommt. Die intensive Auseinandersetzung mit dem anglikanischen Kirchenverstandnis des 19. Jahrhunderts dient damit uber die Diskussion der Implikationen fur die moegliche innere Einheit der Kirche hinaus als Grundlage fur einen Einblick in die Konsequenzen der damaligen Differenzen fur den oekumenischen Dialog der Gegenwart.

After decades of neglect there has recently been a resurgence of interest in the history of the Church of England in "the long eighteenth century." This volume of essays brings together the fruits of some of this research, and reflects the diversity of approaches to the study of the Church of England in the eighteenth century. As a whole, the volume demonstrates that religion and the Church can no longer be regarded as a discrete subject in the history of eighteenth-century England, but are central to a full understanding of its life and thought.

This book explores the culture of conformity to the Church of England and its liturgy in the period after the Reformation and before the outbreak of the Civil War. It provides a necessary corrective to our view of religion in that period through a serious exploration of the laypeople who conformed, out of conviction, to the Book of Common Prayer. These "prayer book Protestants" formed a significant part of the spectrum of society in Tudor and Stuart England, yet until now they have remained an almost completely uninvestigated group.

A collection of talks and sermons from Rowan Williams, one of the finest theological minds of our day, covering a range of issues from war, social justice and sexuality to prayer, spirituality and evangelism. Williams shows the connections between contemporary issues, biblical texts and the Christian tradition, each element drawing new and often surprising things out of the others, and challenges us to make our own connections between the gospel, contemporary problems and our personal struggles.

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.

A scholarly edition of essays by John Donne. The edition presents an authoritative text, together with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.

This book analyzes two large surveys of clergy and lay people in the Church of England taken in 2001 and 2013. The period between the two surveys was one of turbulence and change, and the surveys offer a unique insight into how such change affected grassroots opinion on topics such as marriage, women's ordination, sexual orientation, and the leadership of the Church. Andrew Village analyzes each topic to show how opinion varied by sex, age, education, location, ordination, and church tradition. Shifts that occurred in the period between the two surveys are then examined, and the results paint a detailed picture of how beliefs and attitudes vary across the Church and have evolved over time. This work uncovers some unforeseen but important trends that will shape the trajectory of the Church in the years ahead.

Richard Trahair shares an insider's experience of the wide-ranging 'goings on' in a large Church of England diocese in the south of England from the 1980s. As estate manager - Diocesan Property Secretary - for more than thirty years, he reflects on the astonishing range of characters he worked alongside, and the diverse buildings and land for which he was responsible. Richard delves into the nature of a parsonage house, its parish loyalties, and the keen controversy over selling the grand old houses and replacing them with smaller ones so that the impoverished clergy and their families can at least keep warm. Both people and places were a heady mix of the delightful, the worthy, the curious and the downright eccentric. With encounters recounted that range from wacky and hilarious, to thought-provoking and historical, catch a glimpse into the life of a twenty-nine-year-old surveyor in a diocesan office dominated by retired military gentlemen, rattling around in a huge 15th century former city workhouse, as he grows into his role.

The cathedrals of England and Wales are remarkable buildings. From the centuries leading up to the Norman Conquest to the tumults of the Reformation to the devastating wars of the 20th century, they carry traces of our nations' darkest moments and most brilliant endeavours. This beautifully illustrated new volume tells the stories behind 50 remarkable artefacts - one for each cathedral - that have been preserved by the cathedrals of the Church of England and the Church in Wales. Featuring the Magna Carta of Salisbury Cathedral as well as the oldest book of English literature in the world, an Anglo-Saxon portable sundial, and Pre-Raphaelite glass, painting and embroidery, these local and national treasures are a vital part of our heritage, testifying to the powerful and enduring links between cathedrals and the wider communities of which they are part.

The Oxford History of Anglicanism is a major new and unprecedented international study of the identity and historical influence of one of the world's largest versions of Christianity. This global study of Anglicanism from the sixteenth century looks at how was Anglican identity constructed and contested at various periods since the sixteenth century; and what was its historical influence during the past six centuries. It explores not just the ecclesiastical and theological aspects of global Anglicanism, but also the political, social, economic, and cultural influences of this form of Christianity that has been historically significant in western culture, and a burgeoning force in non-western societies today. The chapters are written by international exports in their various historical fields which includes the most recent research in their areas, as well as original research. The series forms an invaluable reference for both scholars and interested non-specialists. Volume one of The Oxford History of Anglicanism examines a period when the nature of 'Anglicanism' was still heavily contested. Rather than merely tracing the emergence of trends that we associate with later Anglicanism, the contributors instead discuss the fluid and contested nature of the Church of England's religious identity in these years, and the different claims to what should count as 'Anglican' orthodoxy. After the introduction and narrative chapters explain the historical background, individual chapters then analyse different understandings of the early church and church history; variant readings of the meaning of the royal supremacy, the role of bishops and canon law, and cathedrals; the very diverse experiences of religion in parishes, styles of worship and piety, church decoration, and Bible usage; and the competing claims to 'Anglican' orthodoxy of puritanism, 'avant-garde conformity' and Laudianism. Also analysed are arguments over the Church of England's confessional identity and its links with the foreign Reformed Churches, and the alternative models provided by English Protestant activities in Ireland, Scotland and North America. The reforms of the 1640s and 1650s are included in their own right, and the volume concludes that the shape of the Restoration that emerged was far from inevitable, or expressive of a settled 'Anglican' identity.

An accessible introduction to important topics that are deeply contested within the Church of England - marriage, gender equality and sexuality. It draws on sources displaying an inclusive perspective whilst staying respectful to those who take a different view. It explores a diverse and fascinating range of questions such as: How should the church treat those who do not conform to gender stereotypes, or experience their gender atypically? Are there limits to inclusion? What should the church say about desire and self-control? Informative and thought-provoking, this book enables the reader to 'think better' about the issues discussed by presenting the history, the religious texts, the forms of reasoning and the recent scholarship which these topics have attracted both inside and outside of theology.