Glorious Companions: Five Centuries of Anglican Spirituality (Five Centuries Anglican Spirit)

Features

• Cover Type: Paperback with 360 pages
• Published by: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company December 2002
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0802822223
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0802822222
• Book Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Weighs: 1.2 pounds

From Library Journal
Retired priest and managing editor of the Episcopalian, Schmidt offers a very substantial but simply written view of notables in and of the Anglican-Episcopal spiritual communion since the days of Thomas Cranmer (the first Protestant archbishop of Canterbury), including John Donne, the Wesleys, Evelyn Underhill, and Madeleine L'Engle. His book includes excerpts from the writings of many eloquent and varied witnesses of the Anglican church. This volume should interest Anglicans and non-Anglicans alike; for most collections.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Reader Reviews
A good idea, but a rather disappointing achievement. There's very little to sink one's teeth into here. Mere snippets from 29 Anglican authors' writings are offered. None of them are longer than a third of a page, many of them are no more than 2 or 3 sentences. As a consequence, the reader doesn't get "Five Centuries of Anglican Spirituality" so much as "300 pages of Anglican quotes." Quotations are tricky things. If they're epigrams or one-liner witticisms--the kind of stuff Oscar Wilde, for example, churned out--they can stand alone. But quotations that are taken from larger works, particularly theological and spiritual ones, rarely do well apart from their contexts. They may provide raw material for lectio divina or meditative prayer. But they hardly give an idea of the depth or breadth of Anglican spirituality. It's all well and good, for example, to know that Dorothy Sayers wrote that "It is curious that people who are filled with horrified indignation whenever a cat kills a sparrow can hear that story of the killing of God told Sunday after Sunday and not experience any shock at all" (p. 273). But what does this quotable quote, which first appeared in the Introduction to Sayers' "The Man Born To Be King," actually mean? Read by itself, it's a commonplace, almost trite observation. It's only Sayers' reflections on this strange indifference to the killing of God, as well as her thoughts on scriptural "realism"--all of which Schmidt omits--that makes the passage worth attending to.