Not Angels, but Anglicans was originally the title given to a collection of articles in Church Times, published together as 'A history of Christianity in the British Isles' (SCM-Canterbury Press, 2000). But the angelic designation would be well used to describe a collection of titles with more contemporary subject matter: The church not of yesterday but of today and tomorrow.

The past twelve months have seen an host of new books concerned not with history, but with different aspects of today's Anglican church, particularly the English parish. A Parish Survival Guide (Martin Dudley & Virginia Rounding, SPCK, 2004) is the latest addition to the throng:

It was on reading chapter 7 of this Survival Guide, Dear Bishop, I want to complain, that "Not Angels..." first came to mind.

Here the authors put the Guidelines for the Professional Conduct of the Clergy in context, examining the situations which may arise in a Parish. The following extract from Halsbury's Ecclesiastical Law is the first approach to defining what constitutes "conduct unbecoming":

...drunkenness, frequenting alehouses and tippling (this in 1700!), incontinence (in the sense of unchastity), habitual swearing and ribaldry, irreverent language in the pulpit, writing a rude letter to a parishioner or an obscene letter to an unmarried woman, the collection of alms on false pretences, the forgery of orders and cruelty to a servant. [95]

And that's just the clergy! But do not be misled. This is a very approachable, sane and comprehensive guide to parish life and every incumbent would do well to have a copy - perhaps shelved alongside the latest Guidelines.

Giles writes primarily for the parishioner, not the cleric. The book provides a broad and helpful overview of what is Anglican and why.

Chapter 7, Us and Me: The Anglican Approach to Church, renders everything from being church to the purpose of a diocese quite intelligible. Particularly memorable is Giles' caricature of the parish church:

"Parish churches are like branch railway lines; too few use them until closure threatens. Thereupon the whole community is awash with posters and car-stickers, and you can't emerge from your front door without falling over a woman with a clip-board asking you to sign a petition. This is the church: the local corner shop, God's post office in your street." [48]

The portrait is familiar, but how do we change it? Could the Woolwich clergy have the answer...?

This book was conceived as 'the Parish response' to Anglicanism: The Answer to Modernity, a collection of essays by eight young Deans and Chaplains from Cambridge (Continuum, 2003).

Addressing the concerns of a shrinking church, the fenland dons posited intellectual and conceptual responses to diverse social issues. Mirroring their own vocation, they proposed chaplaincy as the key model for the Anglican Church's ministry [200].

But Malcolm Torry and others in the Woolwich Episcopal Area this focus sidelines the centripetal force of the local parish church. The parish is in its locality, in the marketplace; in that centrality the parish is an essential shared space, a place of sacred trust. Drawing on their own experience, the contributors offer a broad range of essays, surveying different aspects of Parish life, from Architecture to Youthwork, Ecumenism and Evangelism.

The approach is down-to-earth, with each contributant reflecting on their own specific experiences. The effect is perhaps "episodic" but --like the well-known parable of blind people describing an encounter with an elephant-- together these episodes bring a picture of parochial fullness. The conclusion:

"It might well be an accident of history that the parish has evolved, but it has evolved, it is still very much alive, and we are privileged to be part of it."

Spencer proposes a quite different basis for the future of Anglican Britain. He begins with a disconcerting analysis of the current situation:

"As the publication of countless books on English churches makes very clear, the Church of England is made of stone. Having started life as being founded on the rock, it has become one." [xii]

Believing we are thus 'crushed by our heritage', his approach is to cast further back in English history, and so he proposes the model of the Minster Church.

The Minster Church Spencer describes is not a place of secluded monasticism as associated with the Fountains or Riveaux Abbeys. It belongs to an earlier, Anglo-Saxon concept of the monk's life. For these early monastics there was no dichotomy between the pastoral and the contemplative; social duties were part and parcel of their sacramentality.

In comparison with modern ecclesial structure, the Minsters' "absence of rigid foundation" rendered them adaptable to each situation, primed for growth. Missionary churches, with a role to and for everyone in the locality, Minsters dominated Anglo-Saxon Britain.

It is, argues Spencer, in this peculiarly Anglo-Christian combination of the communal life with pastoral activity that the hope of the Anglican presence in Britain lies. His view of the past may lean more towards romance than realism, but the projected outcome is sufficiently intriguing to check instant dismissal.

If you haven't already heard about Mission-Shaped Church, you must have been in hibernation for the last six months. Now in its fourth reprint, this report spells out with clarity why the Anglican Church needs to change.

It is a book not of disparagement, but encouragement. It contains fresh, practical and realistic reflections on ways of 'being church'. Above all it is a clarion call, a challenge, to the Church of England to come face-to-face with the future beginning today.

If history remains your preferred path, Chadwick and his companions propose a fascinating journey through the annals, avenues and anecdotes of Christian Britain.