The Nicene Creed: A scriptural, historical & theological commentary by Jared Ortiz and Daniel A. Keating (Baker, £21.99 (£19.79); 978-1-5409-6511-0).

“Though the Nicene Creed is regularly recited in weekly church services, few understand its historical origins and connections to Scripture and key Christian doctrines. This volume bridges the gap, providing an accessible introduction that explains how the Creed is anchored in the Bible and how it came to be written and confessed in the early history of the church.” 


Churches of Bedfordshire by John Jackson (Amberley, £15.99 (£14.39); 978-1-3981-1821-8).

“One of Bedfordshire’s most famous sons, John Bunyan, was baptised in the church of St Mary and St Helena, at Elstow, over 500 years later, just one of approximately fifty places of worship featured in this selection of Bedfordshire churches following John and Jenny Jackson’s extensive travels around their home county’s places of worship.”


Forgiveness: An alternative account by Matthew Ichihashi Potts (Yale, £14.99 (£13.49); 978-0-300-27682-4). New in paperback

“Matthew Ichihashi Potts explores the complex moral terrain of forgiveness, which he claims has too often served as a salve to the conscience of power rather than as an instrument of healing or justice. Though forgiveness is often linked with reconciliation or the abatement of anger, Potts resists these associations, asserting instead that forgiveness is simply the refusal of retaliatory violence through practices of penitence and grief. It is an act of mourning irrevocable wrong, of refusing the false promises of violent redemption, and of living in and with the losses we cannot recover.”

Selected by Frank Nugent, of the Church House Bookshop, which operates the Church Times Bookshop.