In 2012 Samuel Wells left his position as dean of Duke University Chapel and research professor of Christian ethics at Duke Divinity School to return to England, where he is now vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London. After seven years in the American academy and the Episcopal Church, Wells developed a unique insider-outsider perspective from which those he leaves behind have much to learn. As parting gifts he offers two books with wide-ranging interest for American readers: What Episcopalians Believe and Learning to Dream Again.
What Episcopalians Believe, the American companion to Wells’s What Anglicans Believe, begins in a defiantly prudent place. Amid all of the controversy in the Episcopal Church, Wells “is not arguing that we live in especially momentous times” (p. xii). What interests Wells in this introductory work is not primarily to analyze positions on women’s ordination or same-sex blessings, but to understand and celebrate what God has done for the world in Jesus Christ.