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A Warwickshire Gospel
Malcolm Monkhouse

A Warwickshire Gospel
Malcolm Monkhouse
MILLIONS OF WORDS and thousands of books have been written about Jesus of Nazareth. Most of his life story took place 2,000 years ago in Galilee, a rural province north of Jerusalem, rural but on the main trade route from Egypt to the whole Middle East.

Galilee was looked down upon by the political and religious establishment in Jerusalem who enjoyed a comfortable modus vivendi with the occupying Romans. The culture and setup were very different from Britain today, which is one reason why many cannot see the point of reading about Jesus.

Suppose now that what Jesus did and said in the Gospel story of Mark takes place instead in England today in a rural provincial county, Warwickshire, and culminates in the centre of power, in London.

Who would the main characters be and how would their words and deeds convey afresh the meaning of the life of Josh - his real name - for our troubled world? Read on....
Published: May 2020
Paperback: 48 pages
Price: £3.99
ISBN: 9-781913-425043

UK Only
£3.99 (+ £2.50 postage)
Number of copies:

Available on Amazon
Malcolm was born and lived in Altrincham, Cheshire until he moved for family reasons to rural Warwickshire in 2000. He graduated in P. and E. at Durham and worked in manufacturing, travelling extensively in Europe and North America. He has worked many years as a church warden, having met Christ at the age of fourteen in Germany, which he visited many times for reconciliation. This is also a distinguishing feature of Coventry’s peace making mission to the world.

He believes that the gospel stories, not ‘isms’, provide the best guide we have for life here and hereafter.

Reviews...
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A journey through Jewish Peoplehood
Avraham Infeld

New-6 Avraham Infeld’s book takes the reader on a journey through Jewish Peoplehood, that powerful yet intangible idea that connects Jews together, no matter where they live or how they practice. Starting with the core components of Peoplehood, and ending with his ideas about the future of the Jewish People, the book contains powerful messages about how to achieve unity without uniformity in today’s global world. Through his trademark stories and accessible messages, Infeld offers Jewish leaders and educators – indeed any interested Jew – the opportunity to engage with ideas that can change the Jewish world. Melitz logo rb
Published: November 2017
Paperback: 192 pages
UK Price: £11.99
US Price: $14.99
ISBN: 9-781911-175957


US Edition

Available from YouCaxton
$14.99 - (plus $3 postage)

Number of copies:


Also from Amazon.com

and Amazon Kindle



UK Edition

Available from YouCaxton
$11.99 - (plus £2 postage)

Number of copies:

Also from Amazon.co.uk

and Amazon Kindle
AVRAHAM INFELD
Based in Jerusalem, but a tireless traveler to all parts of the globe, Avraham Infeld has dedicated his long and distinguished career to helping Jews find meaning and joy in their Jewish identities. Born in South Africa and raised in a Zionist family, Avraham made aliyah to Israel and studied Jewish History and Bible at the Hebrew University, and Law at Tel Aviv University. Embarking thereafter on what would become a career in Jewish education, Avraham served among other roles in the following leadership positions:

• Program Director at Ulpan Akiva
• First Community Shaliach in the US, serving Baltimore and Washington
• Founder and President of Melitz Centers of Jewish Zionist Education
• Director of Shalom Hartman Institute
• Director of the Jewish Agency for Israel’s Youth Department
   for English-Speaking Europe
• Director of Planning Process of Taglit Birthright Israel
• International President and CEO of Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life
• President of the Chais Family Foundation
• Mentor to the Reut Institute for Tikkun Olam and Jewish Peoplehood

In recognition of his contributions to Jewish education, Avraham is the recipient of the Hebrew University’s prestigious Samuel Rothberg Prize for Jewish Education, Hillel’s Renaissance Award, and honorary doctorates from Muhlenberg College and Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion.
Reviews...

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks
An engaging and inspiring set of reflections by one of the master educators of today’s Jewish world – full of delightful stories, compelling analysis and generosity of spirit. Read it and your faith in the Jewish future will be renewed.

Leon Wieseltier
The intensity of Avraham Infeld’s commitment to his people is matched by its intelligence and its generosity. There are stimulations on every page of this candid and ebullient book. Infeld’s soulful monument to ahavat yisrael demonstrates by example that love is best when it is not blind. I am honored to share a people with this man.

Lynn Schusterman
Avraham Infeld is a giant among giants whose philosophy and teachings will shape Jewish life and learning for generations to come. I have seen firsthand how scores of young Jews have found in his personal story and in his vision a Jewish future that speaks directly to their passions and values. This book is a beautiful distillation of his life’s work to ensure the centrality of Israel, tikkun olam and pluralism to the narrative of the Jewish people. It could not come at a more crucial time, given the cultural, demographic and geopolitical shifts we are experiencing in the Jewish community, in Israel and in society more broadly.

Other reviews can be found on these links...

Reviewing: A Passion for a People: Lessons from the Life of a Jewish Educator by Avraham Infeld
ejewishphilanthropy.com/reviewing-a-passion-for-a-people-lessons-from-the-life-of-a-jewish-educator-by-avraham-infeld/

'Israel Has Become the Most Disunifying Force in the Jewish Community'
www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.826046

Avraham Infeld Makes His Case for a Passionate Judaism
jewishjournal.com/culture/arts/227245/avraham-infeld-makes-case-passionate-judaism/

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An imagined early life of Jesus by the former dean of Salisbury Cathedral
Hugh Dickinson

9781911175834 The most profound mystery of Christian theism is the affirmation that the man Jesus of Nazareth was also Divine. Exactly what that means has been a matter of constant debate for two millennia. Christian theologians have made use of a great variety of physical analogies and metaphysical concepts in the attempt to give a rational account of this belief, but the metaphysical algebra no longer has much traction for most people and divinity is not within the reach of materialist rationality. In order to emphasise the presence of the exceptional in him it has been natural to give greater narrative weight to the Divinity of Jesus of Nazareth than to his humanity, which has effectively been shrouded in the glow of the Divine The purpose of this brief essay in imagination is the belief that unless we grasp the biological earthiness of Jesus we cannot fully understand his the Incarnation.
Published: Oct 2017
Paperback: 86 pages
Price: £4.90
ISBN: 9-781911-175834
Available from Amazon
The Very Revd. Hugh Dickinson, Dean Emeritus of Salisbury: Queen’s Scholar at Westminster. MA Oxford, Chaplain Trinity College Cambridge, Chaplain Winchester College, Bishops Adviser in Adult Education Coventry Cathedral, Vicar of St Michaels St Albans, formerly Dean of Salisbury, retired in the Cotswolds, distinguished poet and painter.
Reader Reviews...
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The story of Father Ignatius’s community at New Llanthony Abbey
Hugh Allen

9781911175230 To the diarist Francis Kilvert, his near neighbour Father Ignatius (born Joseph Leycester Lyne in 1837) seemed ‘entirely possessed by the one idea’ of introducing his distinctive version of the monastic life into the mid-Victorian Anglican Church. Rejecting any suggestion that he should temper his grand ambition by meeting comfortably protestant Britain half way, Ignatius endured ridicule, harassment and regular episcopal embargo, but persevered until his dying day with what he believed was his individually God-given mission. Ignatius’s enduring memorial is ‘New Llanthony Abbey’, an eccentric, now partly ruined Gothic extravaganza at Capel-y-ffin, a remote upland hamlet on the Welsh border. Monks and nuns came and went – some evidently pursuing a genuine religious vocation but failing to find it there; others apparently from less worthy motives.
Published:July 2016
Paperback:504 pages
Price:£18.50
ISBN:9-781911-175230
Available from Amazon
Hugh Allen tells the story of Ignatius’s community from its origins in early 1860s East Anglia to its migration to Wales in 1870, its history through the following four decades (including the controversial 1880 Apparitions), and its demise after the founder’s death in 1908. He also describes the later history of the former monastery, home in the 1920s to the sculptor and typographer Eric Gill and for many years to the family of his eldest daughter, and brings the story up to date with information about the Father Ignatius Memorial Trust and the continuing appeal of New Llanthony as a place of pilgrimage. The author is a longstanding member of the Father Ignatius Memorial Trust.
Reader Reviews...

The Church Times
In the midst of the burgeoning religious fervour of 19th-century Britain, the tragic-comic figure of Joseph Leycester Lyne [Fr Ignatius] must surely represent the epitome of … the “virtuoso religion” of some of its more enthusiastic and eccentric characters. As such, a book like Hugh Allen’s has been lacking for a long time….. The whole work is forensically researched, meticulously referenced, and fluently written – a winning combination that makes it as enjoyable as it is useful – and the footnotes are often as interesting and informative as the main body of the text. Lyne was either a faithful thwarted prophet or a volatile pious lunatic. Perhaps he was a heady combination of both; but Allen leaves that judgement to the reader, and does so in a masterly fashion. This book has been well worth the wait.

William Davage, New Directions, December 2016
‘An enjoyable, constructive, detailed and compelling study … This is a substantial and significant book, well-researched, rooted in thorough archival sources and attractively, if weightily, presented … comprehensive in its scope, measured and considered in its judgements.'

News Letter of the Anglo Catholic History Society, Autumn 2016
Much meticulous research has gone into this substantial book … Hugh Allen has utilised a wide range of archive relating to Ignatius himself and the community and its associates across the whole the chequered range of its history … All in all this book is a fascinating compendium of information about a bizarre and ambiguous monastic experiment.

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Retraces the footsteps of St Columbanus of Bangor, a modern pilgrimage.
Barry Sloan

9781909644953
Why would a Northern Irish Protestant, raised in a staunchly loyalist community, hitchhike through Catholic Europe on the trail of medieval celtic monks? Why is the seaside town of Bangor in Northern Ireland largely responsible for Europe becoming a Christian continent? What role did an Ulsterman play in the creation of the European Union, and what can be done today to break down walls and bring people together? Who was Columbanus of Bangor and why are present-day librarians from all over the world indebted to him? Why does God not like zebras, has Murphy's Law anything to do with chaos theory, and why are the Germans the reason Ireland had to wait 1,900 years to get decent, straight roads?
Published:20th Nov 2015
Paperback:206 pages
Price:£9.99
ISBN:9-781909-644953

 Available from Amazon
and Kindle e-books


Answers to all these questions can be found within these pages, the story of the European travels of sixth-century saint, Columbanus - and of a twenty-first century sinner, the book’s author. Weaving history, politics, theology, and personal narrative together in a humorous and readable way, Sloan tells the fascinating story of Columbanus and his legacy in uniting Europe. Profound moments of reflection and insight are punctuated by hilarious episodes: of breakfast with Vikings, of an attack by monster bees - and lunch with a talking horse! When the Saints go Marching is funny, thought-provoking, informative, inspiring and challenging - and all without being preachy.

Barry J. Sloan, born in Carrickfergus in Northern Ireland, is married and has two children. He is an ordained Methodist minister, currently serving as mission partner with the United Methodist Church in Germany.
Reader Reviews...