WATCH highly recommends Maggi Dawn’s latest book “Like the Wideness of the Sea: Women Bishops and the Church of England”.
Maggi is a former Fellow and Chaplain of Robinson College, Cambridge and now Dean of Chapel and Associate Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School. This timely publication provides an acute analysis of the predicament we face in the Church of England and a convincing vision of how to break through into a place of greater flourishing.
‘A moving,powerful, and essential book, Maggi Dawn names with great charity the challenge before the church ….a book of prophetic clarity – one that will uniquely inform the current debate.’Rt Revd Nick Baines, Bishop of Bradford
Her publishers say….
“The failure of the Church of England to ordain women as bishops in November 2012 led to a tidal wave of shock, anger and recrimination. Many people are questioning whether the Church can survive this crisis. How many women priests and ordinary churchgoers will leave out of a sense of betrayal? What is the way forward?
Maggi Dawn watched with sadness but without surprise as the events of the Synod vote unfolded. As an ordained Church of England priest working in the United States where women can become bishops, she is uniquely able to comment on the current debate. In the book, as well as exploring the theology that has informed the process and debate over women’s ordination, Maggi also looks at the spirituality of waiting. We spend much of our time urging each other to wait for God, but what if God is waiting for us?
At the heart of the book is Maggi Dawn’s account of her unfolding vocation, and the discrimination she has faced as a woman. ‘To recount honestly the experience of living with unacceptable levels of prejudice may not make for a pleasant read, and I have thought much about whether I should write it down at all. But in the end this is not an angry book, or a sad one, because I am neither angry nor sad. I feel immensely fortunate and full of hope.’ ”
‘Maggi has brought together serious and generous theological exposition of the issues around the delay in the decision to consecrate women as bishops of the Church of England…She writes brilliantly about the theology of reception and the contrast between paralysis and transformation. There is a prophetic call served by rage, but to a moving on in love and inclusion. This is a TARDIS of a book, larger on the inside than the number of pages indicates, a truthful book which distils the argument and builds hope for the future.’ The Rt Rev’d Stephen Conway,Bishop of Ely
Like the Wideness of the Sea is currently available on special offer from Amazon at £5.24
