Espiscopalians and Anglicans are having their problems these days. ((Also here.) As an encouragement and since I gave a post the week before last to my Catholic brethren and sisters, this week I thought I’d highlight some of my favorite books with an Anglican or Episcopalian setting or background.
The twin Episcopalians are, of course, Jan Karon and Madeleine L’Engle. A Severed Wasp by Ms. L’Engle which takes place in and around the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City is delightfully Episcopalian. It was in this book that I learned that there are orders of Episcopal nuns (how was I to know?) and that a whole microcosm of society can be contained within the walls of a cathedral. In addition, A Severed Wasp tells a great story about faith and betrayal and abuse and forgiveness.
Jan Karon’s Mitford novels are also very Episcopalian. I just read Lauren Winner’s Girl Meets God, and she admits to reading and enjoying the Mitford books with a sort of a guilty pleasure. I don’t feel guilty about them at all. My definition of great literature is still evolving, and the Mitford books are definitely on my list of 100 greatest fiction books of all time, whether anyone else considers them great literature or not. Father Tim, the main character in the Mitford books, is an Episcopal priest, and he lives a life full of small joys and small crises that all add up to a life lived Big in the presence of the Lord Jesus. It’s Christianity as it actually plays out in the lives of everyday people, a quotidian kind of Christianity as my friend at Mental Multivitamin might say. (Thanks for the addition to my vocabulary, MFS.)
C.S.Lewis was Anglican, but the atmosphere of his books is more “mere Christianity.” Dorothy Sayers and P.D. James are more conspicuously Anglican. Parts of their stories take place in Anglican cathedrals and monasteries and other religious places. Death in Holy Orders by P.D. James is set in an Anglican theological college. In Dorothy Sayers’ The Nine Tailors the church and especially the church bells are central to the setting and the plot of the mystery.
Reaching back into Victorian England, there’s Anthony Trollope whose Barsetshire novels are set in a fictional cathedral town populated by all sorts of curates, prebendaries, archdeacons, canons, vicars, and bishops. Very Victorian. Very Church of England. I’ve read Barchester Towers (a long time ago), and I’m in the process of reading Framley Parsonage.. I’ll let you know how I like it when I’m done. I hesitate to say that this quotation from Barchester Towers, which I prophetically recorded about thirty years ago when I read that novel, characterizes the current state of the Anglican communion; however, if the shoe fits . . .
Mr. Arabin:“It is the bane of my life that on important subjects I acquire no fixed opinion. I think, and think, and go on thinking, and yet my thoughts are running ever in different directions.”
I’ve read revews and recommendations for the clerical fiction of Susan Howatch. Has anyone here read her books?
For nonfiction, I like these Anglican and Episcopalian authors and apologists: C.S. Lewis, John R.W. Stott, Os Guinness, and J.I. Packer. The best book the Church of England ever produced was The Book of Common Prayer, a classic if there ever was one.
I like Madeline L’Engles adult fiction and I enjoy it. The Mitford books are like dear old friends. Very dear.
The whole time I was reading, I was thinking, “I wonder if she’s going to mention Susan Howatch. I just read The Wonder Worker a few weeks ago, and it was a wonderful read. I will read some of her other works. Many of them are part of a series, but I think that this one is a stand alone.
I’m working on a site redesign, so you might be able to check me out for real. I know you have been waiting with baited breath. Ha. I mostly use Firefox browser now, and on my site the brown underpage does load first, but then the cream does come up over it, so that it can be read.
My husband, an Anglican priest and avocational theologian, read some of Susan Howatch’s novels years ago and enjoyed them, but felt they were tinged with Jungian spirituality; he says that, in an interview in Christianity Today’s Books & Culture magazine, she was reluctant to describe herself as an orthodox Christian. They were good reads, though, and very Anglican in setting.
T. S. Eliot was also an Anglican. I believe Elizabeth Goudge was as well–The Dean’s Watch and The Scent of Water both have Anglican priests as characters, and maybe City of Bells, if memory serves.
[Just for the record, we’re not part of the ECUSA (Episcopal Church of the USA) mess. We’re under bishops from the Third World who consider us their missionary arm in the US–the Anglican Mission in America (AMIA). It sure is an interesting and historic time in the Anglican world, though–I need to blog about it!]
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