Alan Jones, author of Reimagining Christianity: Reconnect Your Spirit Without Disconnecting Your Mind and Living the Truth is dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. He was formerly director of the Center for Christian Spirituality at General Theological Seminary in New York. In this thought-provoking paperback he looks at the considerable challenges and opportunities facing the Episcopal Church. He begins with a whimsical observation that both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism are becoming more "Anglican." Roman Catholicism is more open than it used to be, and more Protestants appreciate liturgy and tradition than in the past.

The author admits that the Eucharist is at the heart of his spiritual life along with the Daily Office. In a long chapter, Jones calls for a plague on both Fundamentalism and Scientism, which rely too much on literalism and don't have enough respect for mystery. He then deals with the caricatures of Anglicanism as fuzzy and lukewarm, filled with those who are addicted to "muddled-thinking."

Jones hits highs stride in his delineation of the nine marks of Anglican Orthodoxy. Here is a noble defense of the spiritual practice of mystery and "the ability to hold the paradox of knowing and not-knowing at the same time in silence and adoration." He states that the point of reading the Bible is for communal and personal transformation, and notes in the ninth mark that "Orthodoxy calls us to live a life of joy in the power of the resurrection as a sign of hope for the world, and to serve others in the name of the one who made us and the conviction that God can be seen in everyone."

In the last section, Jones salutes John Donne as a great exemplar of the Anglican tradition. Donne, a metaphysical poet and dean of St. Paul's in the first part of the seventeenth century, demonstrated an abiding respect for mystery, silence, conversation, prayer, and worship. Jones, as always, provides a delicious cross-cut of imaginative material from creative souls and books he has read.