Archbishop sings our praises!

Well, not our praises actually, one of our author’s praises. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the most senior figure in the Anglican world, gave a lecture in York earlier this week that received quite a lot of (mostly) favourable press coverage. It was also mentioned on the main news bulletins and has sparked off a bit of debate.  

Taking as its title ‘Renewing the Face of the Earth; Human Responsibility and the Environment’ he ran through a number of theological considerations about humans their place in the world, and their relationship with the environment. However, it is when he them moves on consider what this could look like that he quotes extensively from one of our books, Jonathon Porrit’s Capitalism as if the Earth Matters. He describes it as ‘a magisterial essay’ and then summarises that ‘these proposals show what an intelligent response to the environmental crisis might look like’. The full text of quite a long lecture is available, for instance on the Guardian newspaper’s web site. 

I think his conclusion is correct, and the book does show what an intelligent response to the environmental crisis would look like, but as we published it, then I would, wouldn’t I?. By contrast, even the thought that the Archbishop of Canterbury has seen the book, let alone read it, digested it, quoted from it and approves of it is very gratifying, and quite out of the blue. Definitely something for the jacket next time we reprint it!