Publication day is finally here! My new book ‘Quaker Shaped Christianity’ is now available to buy in paperback and e-book, and I’m absolutely thrilled. Thanks for all your support of this book. Please do share the news with anyone you think may be interested.
Other book news
My online book launch is on Monday 5 December, 19.30 GMT, and there’s still time to reserve your free place – https://www.woodbrooke.org.uk/courses/quaker-shaped-christianity-book-launch/
I’ll be running an online reading group based on the book starting on Tuesday 10th January. I’ll post more details of this on the blog when it becomes bookable on the Woodbrooke website.
I’ll be doing an in-person book signing at the Quaker Centre, Friends House, London, on Wednesday 18th January at 6pm. Do come and say hello if you’re in the area.
Reviews
In the last few weeks, there have been some great reviews of the book:
This sparkling book’s real power is Mark’s own voice, his transparency about his own life and his path into Christian community. He lived through the sorts of experiences that have brought many refugees out of authoritarian, narrow, or homophobic religiosity, and into our Quaker communities. He treats nobody with scorn or disrespect for their different interpretations, but shows, intelligently and winsomely, that there is another conversation to be had.
Johan Maurer, https://blog.canyoubelieve.me/2022/11/quaker-shaped-christianity.html?spref=tw
What I like most is Mark’s refusal to chip away at Christianity so that he’ll find it more palatable. He approaches it with humility, trying to engage with it on its own terms, as something that started in a very particular time and place and among a very particular people. He rejects so-called obvious Christian doctrines that are actually relatively recent interpretations in order to focus on the actual text. But he grapples with it all, not just the parts that are convenient.
Emily Provance, https://quakeremily.wordpress.com/2022/11/22/quaker-shaped-christianity/
Jolly Quaker 
So pleased for you! I saw it listed in the Quaker Book Shop monthly books listing/ newsletter. So it’s very real now! Congratulations.
Thanks Augene!
Thank you, Mark, for saying so clearly what my heart has been feeling for a long time. Im excited to get your book, and to learn your thoughts on how this tension between inclusivity and Christianity can be addressed among liberal Friends. My experience is that these ways of seeing are inherently incompatible. I am seeking for ways to worship with Christ centered Friends.
Thanks Elise. I hope you find my book helpful.
Probably liberal Quakers should drop the word worship, not to be more inclusive but to simply be honest, to act with integrity. As I think about this, our public face, as in any way connected to George Fox and early Friends, ignores this testimony.
My book is an invitation to wrestle with the theological language we already have. I hope liberal Friends will engage with this before we drop any more of our theological vocabulary.
I look forward to hearing you and Stuart when you have your book launch. My sense is that liberal Quakers have come so far from the faith of early Friends that it would be honest to simply acknowledge this, and that liberal Christocentric Friends, of whom I am one, need a separate space in which to worship going forward.
I’m looking forward to hearing you and Stuart at the book launch. My sense is that liberal Friends have become something so far removed from early Friends that we (I) need to admit this reality, and that Christocentric liberal Friends, of whom I am one, need another way of being Quaker.
Congrats on your book, Mark. It’s a great achievement, and I hope it sells really well.
Many thanks Gerard! I appreciate your support. 🙂
Dear Mark, We’ve been trying to come to your online launch – but every link we tried on Woodbrooke’s site and this one gave us a 404 – PAGE NOT FOUND message, and in the end we had to give up.
So sorry to miss it! We hope you got some good responses, Diana & John.
I’m so sorry that you weren’t able to join Diana and John! We recorded the first part of the book launch and Woodbrooke will share the video. Thanks for all your support. xx