Preface

About me. For most of my life I have worked with words, first as a business journalist, then on a newspaper published by the Diocese of Oxford, and later as an editor of Scripture Union Bible reading notes (which gave me useful insights into both Anglican and independent church traditions). I also spent seven fascinating years working on an NHS mental health team before unexpectedly retiring after finding I had contracted cancer, which was wonderfully and promptly dealt with at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford.

Once healed, I could start researching a project that had been buzzing around at the back of my mind for more than 20 years, ever since I discovered that non-Christians are much more interested in our proliferation of church denominations than most believers.

The process. I began by looking at an old copy of the Shell Guide to England because many of the best-known monuments and buildings, the ones that every tourist should visit, have links to our religious history. There are of course, the great cathedrals like York and Winchester, but also smaller buildings like John Wesley’s Methodist Chapel in London and his equally interesting West Country outpost in Bristol. Then there are towns like Boston and Great Yarmouth, the ports through which many religious exiles of the Baptist persuasion fled to and from Flanders in the 16^th and 17^th centuries. To the North, there’s the little town of Whithorn with its links to the 4^th century Saint Ninian; while on the East and West coasts are the two beautiful holy isles of Lindisfarne and Iona where Celtic Christianity flourished in the 6^th and 7^th centuries. In Glasgow’s Necropolis no one can miss the huge monument erected to the memory of John Knox who propelled Scotland into its Protestant Reformation in just one week in 1560; while in Ireland you can wander at your leisure among the sprawling monastic ruins of Clonmacnoise.

Personalities emerged: the Vikings who had a significant if destructive role in shaping our religious history; King Alfred the Great, who fought many battles against them and who bewailed the poor education of his bishops and priests. Saint Patrick, who is so much more than the folk legend portrayed in souvenirs. Then there’s Margaret, an 11^th century Scottish Queen who is remembered by some as a saint and by others as the person who banished Celtic Christianity. In the 20^th century, the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral was celebrated with a three-week festival of music and dance, but now the cathedral is best known for its ministry of reconciliation. Reconciliation was also the founding principle of Corrymeela in Northern Ireland, a sanctuary of peace and understanding from the end of the Second World War into the present day.

By visiting Ironbridge and Bournville, you can see how Quakers became known as much for their iron and chocolate as for their gentle form of worship; while on the island of Lewis in the Hebrides and in South Wales, the locations marked by the Hebridean and Welsh Revivals can be explored. I have of course included the Catholic Church because, before the Reformation in the 16^th century, we were all Catholic! A lot has happened in Great Britain and Ireland (both North and South) since Christianity first arrived in these islands.

So the idea emerged for a book that would serve as both a history of Christianity as well as a travel guide for individuals and families interested in doing something a bit different with their free time.

I am a journalist, not a historian, so when I discovered that just about every different branch of the Christian faith can be traced back to one person and to one significant place, I treated the chapters of this book as a series of interviews, the difference being that I had to use letters, books and third-hand reports instead of face-to-face interviews in order to delve into the motivations that drove people to leave the denomination they had been born into in order to seek something new.

I have been able to quote some of the actual words of the people in question in most of chapters, although I cannot always guarantee their authenticity, especially those from the early centuries. However, I hope I have provided a sufficient number of footnotes and links to my sources to enable you to check them out for yourselves so you can make up your own minds as to whether they are genuine or not.

Where possible, each chapter has been read through by a representative of the relevant church or denomination, and permission to quote from original sources has been sought from all copyright owners where required. Any lapses, mistakes or misunderstandings will be due to my lack of attention to what I was reading or writing.