Anglicanism

What links the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem and St Peter’s in Rome with the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, and Canaanland in Ota, Nigeria? These are just some of the churches that Anglican priest and writer the Revd Fergus Butler-Gallie highlights in his new book Twelve Churches: An Unlikely History of the Buildings that made Christianity. The Anglican priest and writer joins Damian Thompson on Holy Smoke to explain how each Church not only tells a story but also raises a surprising dilemma for modern believers. Fergus aims to tell the history of the Churches ‘warts and all’ and argues that, from Turkey to Britain, today’s Christians

St John Henry Newman (1801-90) is perhaps the most influential theologian in the history of English Christianity. Yet, as Damian Thompson discusses with Fr Rod Strange – one of the world’s leading authorities on Newman – he was a divisive figure, though perhaps not in the way one might imagine. One of the founders of the Oxford Movement, Newman was widely acknowledged as the most gifted intellectual in the Church of England. In 1845 he converted to Rome and was eventually made a cardinal. Thus he had a unique viewpoint on Church doctrine and dogma. But what is Newman’s significance today? Although he is universally celebrated, conservative and liberal Christians,