The Church Times this week reviews my book, Backpacking through the Anglican Communion: A Search for Unity.
IN HER book Travelling In, Monica Furlong wrote: “Priests are justified only by their powers of being and seeing.”…
Thank God, then, for a priest such as Jesse Zink, who transparently understands this, and who can communicate William Blake’s “minute particulars” with an eye to their global significance, and with love and intelligence.
Backpacking through the Anglican Communion: A search for unity is a marvellous book, at turns prayerful, thoughtful, challenging, and moving. Above all, it glows with a luminosity that gives its readers space for real engagement with the material before them.
Being and seeing are increasingly rare qualities that Zink possesses in spades. In a way that is convincing, he invites and encourages his readers to embrace them, too. His book is a working out of that powerful injunction from Henri Nouwen: “Don’t just do something – stand there!”…
In truth, his book is much needed…
Zink wants us to embrace the truth that unity is mission. It is an argument that he advances in the best traditions of Anglican apologetic, with beauty, clarity, and insight. His book is a must-read for those who truly believe that belonging to the worldwide body of Christ – where there is difference, and should be charity and love – is what discipleship means.
Jesse Zink 