WE COULD do with a good book on hope. Wild Bright Hope brings together 12 contributors — all Anglican, mainly young (or youngish), not well-known as writers, several of global-majority heritage, all but three lay people — who write about Christian hope from their very different ministries.
The common factor is their association with various aspects of the ministry of former Archbishop Justin Welby — his reconciliation ninistry, parliamentary work, the Anglican Communion, the Centre for Cultural Witness, the St Anselm Community, the diocese of Canterbury, his affinity with Holy Trinity, Brompton, and his support of pioneer ministries.
This gathering of advisers and associates was an imaginative way of putting together what was meant to be the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lent Book for this year. Now overtaken by events, the book has been rebranded as The Big Church Read Lent Book for 2025.
Chapters range widely rather than deeply across a miscellany of topics, but always with something to provoke thought, and held within a common focus on hope.
Amid a “vast tapestry of cultural and religious identities”, we are urged to be less nervous of indigenous wisdom, and also to listen to voices of children as they speak of God.
An outline of the work of the Archbishops’ Commissions on housing, social care, and families underlines the importance of reimagining: “We were trying to move the conversation away from the language of constraint to that of possibility.”
There is a strong endorsement of interfaith engagement: “God is found abundantly in those outside our religious communities”; with a tip-off that sometimes “we perceive similarity because we are not paying real attention.”
We learn that the Anglican Communion has a Permanent Representative to the UN, who reminds us that “When we believe that God sees all and will wipe away our tears . . . we might stop needing to have the last word in every disagreement.”
A vicar draws on her Zimbabwean background in finding hope for the Church of England in the five villages of her Kent parish.
A parliamentary adviser recommends a more positive approach to much political life. Her presumption that, “As Christians, we have the unique advantage of having access to the God of all wisdom,” is itself a discussion-starter. Her confidence that, “as we pray and seek God, we can be given blueprints — divine downloads from heaven,” feels surprisingly wide-eyed.
An Anglican Sister, whose baptism in the Spirit revealed “that God could be more wild, more everyday, more present than I could ever imagine”, writes that “Choosing consecrated life is an act of hope.”
A biblical specialist and storyteller wants us to be less dismissive of contemporary searches for transcendence, albeit in a style that seems to stand too close: “May I get sassy for just a moment?”
“Prayer is the language of hope,” we are told elsewhere, and it is a radical act: “When we pray, we are not only seeking comfort; we are engaging in an act of defiance against despair.”
Holding the tension between faith and historic racial injustice is expressed in a poem, and the Anglican Communion is celebrated in terms of the eucharist. “God invites us to sit and eat with him in the mess.”
A final chapter looks head-on at hope amid personal suffering, “a holy act of resistance that refuses to believe that this is how it was meant to be”.
Wild Bright Hope can readily be used for individual Lent reading or, with its Reflective Questions, for group use. Inevitably haunted by circumstance, the book can still stand up in its own right as a provocation to hope.
The Revd Philip Welsh is a retired priest in the diocese of London.
Wild Bright Hope: Reflections on faith (The Big Church Read Lent Book 2025)
Various authors
SPCK £11.99
(978-0-281-09100-3)
Church Times Bookshop £9.59