Calling on the Spirit in Unsettling Times: Anglican Present and Future

by L. William Countryman

Based upon addresses given to Anglican audiences in North America and Australia, Bill Countryman directly confronts the challenges that face Anglicans and other Western Christians at a time of internal division and increasing indifference to religion on the part of educated elites. He regards these challenges as a work of the Holy Spirit, who is clearing the ground for a new era of building, and help readers start thinking about what kind of future the Spirit is leading us toward.

The book begins by presenting the Spirit as a demolition expert, endeavoring to shake us out of our complacency. It then focuses on three central elements of Christian faith and the image of Jesus, the sacraments, and the scriptures, and notes some different ways in which we have seen and utilized them over the ages. It holds out the communion of saints as the key to understanding the ongoing value of the church today. It calls faithful people of all stripes to reject our tendency to turn God’s gifts into idols and to rediscover a humility that will be open to the rebuilding that must now be done with the leadership of the Spirit.

128 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2012

About the author

Bill Countryman is a retired seminary professor and Episcopal priest (still assisting at Good Shepherd Church in Berkeley, CA). He and his spouse, Jon Vieira, live in Oakland, CA, where he tends the garden and writes mostly poetry these days.

I'm a lover of poetry, classical music (with a particular fondness for choral and chamber music and for late-ninteenth-early-twentieth-century orchestral music. I spread my reading broadly: poetry, fiction, history, theology.

And I blog on gardening, reading the Scriptures, and whatever else interests me at billcountryman.com.

Reviews

[Jonathan Frazier]

262.03