Our society is now deeply divided and characterised by distrust, struggling to fathom its predicament and find a remedy. Alan M. Suggate analyses the West’s liberal project, where impersonal science and technology dominate public discourse, whilst values are left to free individual choice, placing them beyond rational debate. When Capitalism is inflated from ideology to obvious truth and politics degraded into populist power games a shared common life and flourishing culture become impossible dreams.
Alan M. Suggate instructs a revival of a humanistic culture centred on flesh-and-blood persons and embedded in nature, and spells out the creative practice of the sciences, social relations, and music and the arts.
Christians are called to be active in the public sphere, to work alongside others to transform society. Corporately they should be engaging in liturgy, the dramatic entering into God’s action in Christ. They should be drawn by Christ – incarnate, crucified and risen – into the Trinitarian life right in the thick of ordinary life, turning outwards to all others and giving themselves within the unwavering love of God for the world.
With reflection honed by international experience and the judicious critique of unpredictable resources, Dr Suggate explores the bonds of shared and interdependent lives in the universe of co-creators in which we find ourselves. He writes a markedly ‘Anglican’ theology attentive both to our ‘common good’ and to the central importance of distinctively Trinitarian ‘common worship’- a much needed focus for both thought and action in our troublesome times.
Ann Loades CBE, Honorary Professor in the School of Divinity, University of St Andrews
The great strength of this book lies in its rare combination of concern for even one person deprived of name and life in an inhuman world, critical and constructive reflections on our culture, and deep commitment to holistic Christianity.
The author persuasively retrieves a more humane way forward, and grounds it in concrete and integral living in Christ, which is valid not only in Britain but world-wide, including in my own country of South Korea, where the weak suffer severely from the ravages of capitalism shorn of values and any sense of transcendence.
Deuk-Hoon Park, Visiting Lecturer of Christian Economic Ethics, the Nehemiah Institute for Christian Studies.
The saying that wisdom is the fruit of experience is abundantly vindicated in Alan Suggate’s passionate yet reasoned defence of an Anglican-inspired Christian humanism. Liturgically rooted and politically engaged, this book represents the fine distillation of a lifetime of reflection and points us with real insight to the kind of public theology urgently needed in modern Britain.
Robert Song, Professor of Theological Ethics, Durham University
This splendid book is the mature fruit of years of teaching, social engagement and Christian practice. It is humanely Anglican, an apologia for the compelling vision of Christian humanism, and a vivid example of the contribution of Anglican social thought to the current cultural situation. Alan Suggate gives the basis of a narrative of Christian living that is in the world, and with the world, but rightly critical of some stories that govern the world. His narrative is presented with honest realism, unafraid of theological depth and yet resolutely eschewing the culture wars which bedevil present debate. It is pleasingly readable with short sections that do not labour the point.
Matthew Bullimore, University of Cambridge (from a review in Modern Believing)
