THE shortlist for the £10,000 Michael Ramsey Prize for 2016 was announced at the Bloxham Festival.
Members of the shortlisting team announced the six titles one by one, giving reasons for why they had been selected. They were:
Faith and Struggle on Smokey Mountain: Hope for a planet in peril by Benigno P. Beltran(Orbis, £18.99 (£17.10); 978-1-570-75975-8): “a moving, theologically bracing book”;
Healing Agony: Re-imagining forgiveness by Stephen Cherry (Continuum, £15.99 (£14.40); 978-1-4411-1938-4): “compelling and surprising”;
Children in the Bible by Anne Richards (SPCK, £12.99 (£11.70); 978-0-281-06688-9): “a deceptively easy read”;
Unapologetic: Why, despite everything, Christianity can still make surprising emotional sense by Francis Spufford (Faber & Faber, £8.99 (£8.10); 978-0-571-22522-4): “very funny, as well as thought-provoking”;
Dementia: Living in the memories of God by John Swinton (SCM Press, £25 (£22.50); 978-0-334-04672-1): “clear, rigorous, lucid, well-researched”;
God’s Presence: A contemporary recapitulation of early Christianity by Frances Young (Cambridge University Press, £20.99 (£18.90); 978-1-107-63286-8): “applies the wisdom of the Early Church to today”.
The judges were also announced. They will be: Archbishops Justin Welby and Josiah Idowu-Fearon, Professor Rosalind Searle, Sally Magnusson, and Dr Anna Rowlands. The winner will be unveiled at the Greenbelt Festival on 28 August.
Church Times Bookshop prices in italics.