DESCRIPTION

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.

Contributors:

• 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 & environmentalist, visionary convert to Anglicanism
• Rupert Sheldrake, biologist, on heresy, and why Science needs a Reformation
• John 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 — 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

About the author:
Caroline Chartres is a regular contributor to the Church press. She is married to the Bishop of London. They live in London with their four children.