Book Launch: Generous Faith

Join us for the book launch of Generous Faith as part of Waterloo Festival 2024.

Date: Friday, 12th July
Time: 6:00pm-8:00pm (Doors open from 5:45pm)
Venue: The Forum at St John's Waterloo, Waterloo Road, London SE1 8TY

Highlights of the evening:

• Introduction and reading by the author
• Q&A session
• Book signing
• Light refreshments and networking

Revd Canon Giles Goddard embodies the story of the Church of England’s struggles to understand and accommodate differences in human sexuality.

From the paradox of feeling both excluded and called to the priesthood, to becoming the only openly gay priest on the Living in Love and Faith co-ordinating group, this book reflects on thirty years’ experience of trying to make the church more inclusive.

In his work as priest of St John’s Waterloo, he has continued to push the boundaries of inclusion, offering a prayer space for the Muslim community, welcoming refugees, the street homeless, and Extinction Rebellion activism.

Anyone who shares these dreams for the church will recognise themselves here: Giles is a kind of everyman for everyone whose faith and work bring them into conflict with the stance of the Church. The story is told through the lens of the Christian year with its seasons of preparation, retreat and growth.

"Layers of history lie beneath much of the city. A Roman amphitheatre under the Guildhall, the dark hollows of the hypocaust still visible, the shouts of spectators almost audible, the arena where beasts fought and humans sacrificed easily traced. Plague pits around Smithfield. Foundations of the Rose theatre buried deep inside an office block on the river’s Southwark bank. Not far from here, hard by Caffé Nero in the Oxo Tower, is another causeway, exposed when the water recedes, used for centuries – millennia – for the launching of boats to cross the fast flowing river.

But the marsh remained marsh while the city grew around it. Between Southwark and Lambeth the reign of mud continued long into the seventeenth century. The first attempt at reclamation, a dyke along the riverbank, did little to contain the tides. Beneath the steps of St John’s, beneath the neoclassical portico lending its pomposity to the bus station and the IMAX cinema, there are few relics. No broken bits of blue and white pottery, no empty earthenware flagons, no discarded oyster shells, no bones, human or otherwise." - an extract from the opening pages of 'Generous Faith'

Host or Publisher St John's Waterloo