Two books causing something of a stir in Evangelical circles these days are David R. Well's No Place for Truth: or Whatever Happened to Evangelical Theology? and Mark Noll's The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.

The "scandal" of the evangelical mind, of course, is that there is not much of one. There are redoubtable evangelical theologians, there is subtle and rich tradition of evangelical theology that can be traced back through Hooker, Calvin, Luther, and Augustine; but evangelical Christians in North America tend to be theologically illiterate, and the consequences are evldent in the casual and mindless conformity of many evangelicals to the wisdom and empty consumerism of this world.

Canadian Anglicans need not snigger complacently: if the state of the evangelical mind is scandalous, the state of the Anglican mind is certainly no better, and probably worse. Evangelicals at least read their Bibles, even if they do not understand the implications of what they read; Anglicans as a whole do not even read their Bibles, or anything else that is theological.

Anglicans want so much to be practical, and traditionalist Anglicans are no different. But the great practical mission of traditionalist Anglicans is not to lobby General Synod into providing Prayer Book Mattins or Mass with male priests (it is not going to happen), but to teach Anglicans to think about their religion. The materials lie ready to hand-- in the Bible and the Prayer Book there is ample matter for pondering; and even without the aid of any other literature, anyone who is literate, humble, attentive and open-minded can learn much for themselves. Be serious, be systematic, make notes and store your conclusions on paper and in your memory: remembering the most practical thing you can do for the Church is to read a good book.

And for those who want more, there is much more available: You want suggestions? I offer these titles which are not too difficult to obtain (if you can't find them in the nearest bookshop, just put in an order for them):

J.I. Packer: I Want to be a Christian. A clear exposition of Creed, Ten Commandments, Lord's Prayer, and the Sacrament of Baptism from an evangelical perspective. It is a companion piece to his Knowing God, also an excellent introduction to the subject.

Augustine's Confessions is available in many paperback translations, by Chadwick, Pine-Coffin, Pusey, etc. as well as the stately and accurate Jacobean translation of Watts (available in the Loeb Classical Library). It probably should be read with Colin Starnes' excellent comrnentary, Augustine's Conversion: A Guide to the Argument of Confessions I-IX (Wilfred Laurier University Press, 1990). The Confessions is in some sense an autobiography of one of the giants of the Western Church, but even more so, as Starnes shows, it is an argument about conversion; how Augustine was moved (and anyone might be moved) to become a Christian through the objective principles implanted in the world.

Athanasius' On the Incarnation: a short and surprisingly accessible work that comes out of a great struggle against the Arian heresy about the doctrine of Christ.

Peter Toon's Knowing God through the Liturgy (US Prayer Book Society Publishing Company) is useful; and the sermons in Common Prayer Volume Six: Parochial Homilies ... based on the Lectionary of the Book of Common Prayer are often superb. Since Robert Crouse has been so reticent in writing for the general reader, his contributions to this volume, plus his Images of Pilgrimage: Paradise and Wilderness in Christian Spirituality, and occasional papers in the Atlantic Theological Conference Reports (all published by St. Peter Publications) are really the only way many can learn from this eminent scholar.

The Church's Confession of Faith: a Catholic Catechism for Adults (Ignatius). This Roman Catholic work, originally published by the German bishops' conference, obviously reflects certain Roman Catholic concerns: but by far the greater part of it is simply thoughtful modern Catholic exposition of the Church's universal tradition. It could be studied together with the new Catechism of the Catholic Church. (Neither work, by the way, uses the question and answer format of older catechisms. The first is an extended and continuous discussion.)

Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, in the Library of Christian Classics edition translated by Ford Lewis Battles and edited by John T. McNeill. It is handy to have Battles'Analysis of the Institutes of the Christian Religion of John Calvin as well, just to keep the order of the contents straight. Calvin is a vigorous, pugnacious stylist who ought to be read by both Anglo-Catholics and Evangelicals, who tend to an equal level of ignorance about this great theologian. As with the Roman Catholic catechisms above, Anglicans may not wish to follow Calvin all the way, but they will find much more of profit to read there than not.

Other books that spring to mind for a beginner's theological library are those of evangelical Roman Catholic Peter Kreeft, the Anglo-Catholic Austin Farrer (The Triple Victory, or Lord I Believe), the poetic Presbyterian Eugene Petersen, the inevitable C.S. Lewis, and deep-dyed Calvinist R.C. Sproul.

Get practical - read a book!