Frank Dennison Maurice (1805-72) was arguably the most significant Anglican thinker of the modern age, with an immense influence on contemporary Anglican identity and understanding. Through a series of bruising encounters with his contemporaries, he pioneered a creative response to the critical challenges of modernity. Paying equal attention to contemporary criticism and orthodox Christian belief, he anticipated trends in later theology and set a pattern for reflection and negotiation that is familiar in Anglicanism today. In his work on the church's social witness, he founded Christian Socialism; in his writing on the doctrine of the church, he set out principles that remain central to Anglicanism today; he advocated a representative rather than a hierarchical theology of the ministry; and he established the formula of 'Scripture, creeds, sacrament and episopacy' which has guided Anglican approaches to inter-church relations for a century. This reader draws on sermons, pamphlets as well as his classic texts. An introductory essay explores the man and his remarkable legacy.

'Morris has organised a great variety of texts in a way that will interest many readers to learn more about Maurice. Morris's reader provides an interesting collection of texts that will help the reader to appreciate the main issue of Maurice's theology and the vibrant commitment of his faith'. -- The Living Church, October 2008

JEREMY MORRIS is Dean of Trinity Hall, Cambridge and is author of the recently published F D Maurice and the Crisis of Christian Authority (OUP, May 2005)