Karen Favreau is a Generation X seeker who has run the spiritual gamut. Raised Catholic, she lapsed into atheism and began a long, strange journey back to Christian faith. In Ridiculous Packaging she chronicles her trip, offering a humorous, non-preachy, and heartfelt memoir in which she attempts to decipher why a cynical, thirty-three year old atheist would open her heart and accept God s love after having spent an entire lifetime running away from him.

In very practical and helpful terms, Rosalind Brown explores what it means to be a deacon in today's church. All too often the time spent as a deacon is seen simply as the prelude to priestly ordination. Yet the Bible defines three orders of ministry -deacon, priest, and bishop - each with its own distinctive characteristics and responsibilities. In Being A Deacon Today, Brown explores the three places where deacons minister (the church, the world, and at the margins), the three strands of their ministry (in liturgy, in pastoral care, and as catechists), and the three actions of their ministry (praying, loving, and remembering). This book, excellent for classroom use and for transitional and permanent deacons, will restore a fuller understanding of the diaconal ministry and nurture deacons in their work and spiritual life."

The plays of Shakespeare, the Authorized version of the Bible and the Book of Common Prayer, all produced in the late 16th/early 17th centuries, are the three dounding texts of the English nation and its language. Not only do they share a beauty and a power of style which have never been equalled: their influence on Anglophone culture remains profound. Originally produced by Archbishop Cranmer and his allies to bolster the Tudor secession from Catholicism, the Pray Book rapidly took on a life of its own. Until the present century, most Anglicans knew long stretches of the text by heart. It invaded the style of 17th-century p oets and even 19th century novelists like George Elliot. It still colours our language and our way of feeling today, though we hardly know it. In recent years the Prayer Book has been under attack by modernizers and radicals within the church itself. On the 450th anniversary of its first appearance, the time has come to proclaim the value of this work once more and to recognize it for what it is: a liturgical and literary masterpiece.

Andrew White is something of a legend: a man of great charm and energy, whose personal suffering has not deflected him from his important ministry of reconciliation. Andrew grew up in London, the son of strongly religious parents: by the age of five he could repeat the five points of Calvinism. As a child and young man he was frequently ill, but his considerable intelligence meant that his studies did not suffer. He set his heart on becoming an anaesthetist, an ambition he achieved, only to be redirected by God to Anglican ministry. Since ordination he has had a considerable role in the work of reconciliation, both between Christian and Jew and between Shi'ite and Sunni Muslim. Often in danger, and always in pain, he has nevertheless been able to mediate between opposing extremes. A man of God, he is trusted by those who trust very few.

Barbara Brown Taylor is one of America's most renowned and beloved spiritual writers and author of the acclaimed An Altar in the World. Here she reflects on keeping faith and the relentless demands that characterise life for so many today. In this moving and memorable book she writes of her life and work as a priest and the burden of being one of the most celebrated preachers in America. She recalls with grace and wit what led her to priestly ministry, the privilege of exploring the mysteries of God with others, her growing fame, the crisis it provoked and the unexpected blessings that followed. Having been part of a team in a large urban church for ten years, she sought a parish of her own and it was love at first sight when she was invited to view a small rural parish in Georgia. Little did she imagine that here Jesus's words about losing one's life in order to find it would have such impact. She tells of the rapid growth of the church, the crowds who travelled miles to hear her preach, the tensions that arose - and the call to lay it all aside in order to rediscover the authentic heart of her faith.

What do the novelists Charlotte Bronte, Charlotte M. Yonge, Rose Macaulay, Dorothy L. Sayers, Barbara Pym, Iris Murdoch and P.D. James all have in common? These women, and others, were inspired to write fiction through their relationship with the Church of England. This field-defining collection of essays explores Anglicanism through their fiction and their fiction through their Anglicanism. These essays, by a set of distinguished contributors, cover a range of literary genres, from life-writing and whodunnits through social comedy, children's books and supernatural fiction. Spanning writers from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, they testify both to the developments in Anglicanism over the past two centuries and the changing roles of women within the Church of England and wider society.

In this addition to the Reformation Anglicanism Essential Library, Michael P. Jensen examines how the reading and preaching of the Scriptures, the Sacraments, prayer, and singing all inform not only worship in Anglicanism, but worship as it is prescribed in the Bible.