Richard Hooker : prophet of Anglicanism
"Richard Hooker (1554-1600) is the premier theologian of the Church of England, famed for his prophetic apologia of what would later be called "Anglicanism" in his Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity. To the present day, his advocacy of a tolerant, inclusive, moderate, even pragmatic middle way between fundamentalist Protestantism and the more rigid expressions of Roman Catholicism is a hallmark of Anglican/Episcopal Churches." "Hooker's insistence that human reason as well as the customary practices and expressed wisdom of the Church are important sources for knowing God's will remains as a corrective to the biblical literalism that characterizes much of Protestantism." "For all of his importance, little has ever been known about Hooker's life. Izaak Walton's short seventeenth-century hagiography spawned an enduring (but largely inaccurate) tradition that Hooker was a frail, dove-like, holy man - even saintly - who was unhappily married but "judicious" in all of his words and deeds - altogether an uninteresting and forgettable icon of moral rectitude." "With the appearance of Dr. Secor's landmark biography, thoroughly researched over many years yet written in a style accessible to the general interested reader, Hooker emerges at last (on the eve of the fourth centenary of his death) into the light of history as a full-blooded Elizabethan figure endowed with all of the very human strengths and weaknesses of the other leaders in that dynamic, formative age."--Jacket
Biographies
xxii, 362 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color), maps, portraits (some color) ; 24 cm
9780860122890, 0860122891
40799364
The Hookers of Exeter
Growing up in John Hooker's Exeter
School days
Leaving the nest
The Oxford years
Leaving the academic cloister
Début in London
Introduction to Church politics
Appointment at the temple
The great debate begins
The great debate continues
Master of the temple
A judicious marriage
Penman for the Church
Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity
Pastor of bishopsbourne
The final years
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