evidence and careful analysis of the technical jargon. Te solution, in essence, is to grasp the vast complexity of voluntary decision-making. His most persuasive

chapter is on the forming of resolutions. It is not enough to have desires, nor even to turn those desires into intentions and bolster them with beliefs; we must go further and form resolutions that can supersede and if necessary overrule our desires and even intentions. Free will, in other words, is an engagement of greater complexity and commitment than is too oſten supposed. Te proper Christian approach is of

the form, ‘We have a will, certainly. Te question is whether or not it is free,’ from which one discusses sin and its power to bind the will. Te philosophical tradition comes from an entirely different direction, but I gained the exciting sense from this book that this key issue is at last being fully addressed. Tere is an appreciation here of the power of temptation, and therefore the need for serious commitment to the

forming of something more substantial than mere choice and intention, that seaks to our own concerns and interests.

John Turnbul

LIFT HIGH THE CROSS

Anglo-Catholics and the Congress Movement

John Gunstone

Canterbury, 372pp, pbk

978 1 85311 817 3, £25

Of recent chronicles of the rise and fall of

Anglo-Catholicism John Gunstone’s congress history is most hopeful. It ends with an indulgent image from John Betjeman but is throughout concerned to draw the reader’s atention to solid Christian truth. Betjeman’s poem ‘Anglo-Catholic

Congresses’ declares: ‘Te bells and banners – those were the waking days when the Faith was taught and fanned in a golden blaze.’ Te waking up to ritual caught atention easily. Te waking up to the Church as a divine

society extending the incarnation, and establishing justice for the poor in anticipation of God’s kingdom, is by contrast an ongoing and costly arousal. It is fascinating to read how the

Anglo-Catholic Congresses were born a century ago out of a perceived apologetical challenge that sounds quite contemporary. For Richard Dawkins read Bertrand Russell! Te credibility of Christian faith is as much an issue now as then. Te Catholic religion pracised by Anglicans seaks to this challenge through adherents who put flesh onto their words to demonstrate their truth. Where are the successors of Bishop Weston of Zanzibar or Fr Jellicoe, minister of the Kings Cross slum clearance? Tey can be found in what remains of the catholic Anglican tradition. Congress contributor Bishop

Kenneth Kirk saw five truths the nineteenth century Oxford Movement had recovered for the Church of England. Tese were sacramental vision, social mission, personal holiness, pastoral authority and the spiritual independence of the church. Kirk claimed there was much ground to

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