Living the Magnificat

This book offers a sustained reflection by leading Roman Catholic and Anglican writers on Mary's great song of praise and transformation, the "Magnificat", in the context of contemporary struggles across the world and global inequalities. The different contributors relate the story of Mary to issues of international justice, regarding this as one of the key themes of mission and evangelism. In his sparkling essay on the implications of Mary's 'making space' for God, James Alison challenges the reader to 'make space' for an inclusive God.From their very different perspectives, Linda Hogan, Margaret Magdalen and Mongezi Guma go on to address the issue of justice and what it means to be human in the light of Mary's story. Mark Chapman takes up the problem of Christian politics, and how easy it is for Christians to become overly-fixated on church affairs at the expense of the suffering world. Similarly, Michael Doe sees the contemporary Anglican struggles about issues in human sexuality as a distraction from far more pressing matters, challenging the Anglican Communion to learn from the many examples of new life across the globe. In a lively piece, Joe Cassidy challenges Christians to think again about the universality of Christian ethics. Finally, Stephen Cottrell offers a vision of a world turned upside down and presents a call for a renewed sense of mission to combat the inherent destructiveness of so much recent political thinking.Affirming Catholicism is a progressive movement in the Anglican Church, drawing inspiration and hope from the Catholic tradition, confident that it will bear the gifts of the past into the future. The books in this series aim to make the Catholic element within Anglicanism once more a positive force for the Gospel, and a model for effective mission today.

Mark Chapman is Vice President of Ripon College Cuddesdon, Oxford and a member of the Faculty of Theology, Oxford University. He has written widely on modern church history, ethics and theology. His books include Ernst Troeltsch and Liberal Theology (Oxford), The Coming Crisis (Sheffield), Blair's Britain (DLT) and Anglicanism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford). The Revd Jeffrey John is Dean of St Alban's Cathedral, UK.