A New Yorker best book of 2025''brilliantly inventive''. - Tom Holland''learned, highly informative and readable''. - Literary Review''thoughtful, humane and open-minded''. - Kirkus Reviews''A brilliant book''. - Library Journal''witty writing''. - The Times''Hugely accomplished and endlessly readable''. - The Spectator***With his trademark reverence and revelry, The Revd. Fergus Butler-Gallie travels through time and place to get to the heart of the religion he is so passionate about. In this book he takes us from Bethlehem and the birth of Christ some 2000-odd years ago, to the immediate present and future of Christianity. He brings together a Baptist Church in the segregationist American South with a medieval monastery in the heart of the Greek countryside; the Vatican - beautiful, imposing, vainglorious, the seat of Catholicism - with a sparse, tiny private church above the rocky coastline of Southern Japan. Twelve Churches is a quest for a new people''s history of Christianity, told through the stories of twelve churches scattered across the globe. Through a patchwork of interlinking and varied human stories, Butler-Gallie takes us on a physical and historical journey, exploring the role of hope, faith and beauty in Christianity, but also its fraught relationships with sex, violence and power. The story of Christianity is, he shows, the story of our modern world: it''s a story of who we should be, as well who we sometimes are.

Brought to you by Penguin.A laugh-out-loud memoir of becoming a 21st-century priest, Touching Cloth is also a love letter to the Prayer Book, Liverpool, lager, funerals, homemade lemon curd, and, above all, to what the Church of England can be at its best.The very word ''reverend'' inspires solemnity. To be a priest is to dedicate one''s life to quiet prayer and spiritual contemplation. Isn''t it?Fergus Butler-Gallie reveals what it''s like to become a priest in the twenty-first century. Find out why black really is slimming, how to keep a straight face when someone is inadvertently hot-boxing a funeral, and which royal-themed biscuit tin can best contain a very loud personal alarm that no one knows how to switch off. Spot a sweet old lady trying to pay for a taxi with coinage from fascist Spain? Congratulations, shepherd, she''s your problem now.Behind the daily scrapes is an all-too-human love letter to the Church of England, and the amazing variety of people who manage to keep it going, providing a listening ear, company and community at a time when so many people desperately need it, as well as a reflection on what it means to follow a spiritual path amid the chaos of the modern world.©2023 Fergus Butler-Gallie (P)2023 Penguin Audio

A New Yorker best book of 2025''brilliantly inventive''. - Tom Holland''learned, highly informative and readable''. - Literary Review''thoughtful, humane and open-minded''. - Kirkus Reviews''A brilliant book''. - Library Journal''witty writing''. - The Times''Hugely accomplished and endlessly readable''. - The Spectator***With his trademark reverence and revelry, The Revd. Fergus Butler-Gallie travels through time and place to get to the heart of the religion he is so passionate about. In this book he takes us from Bethlehem and the birth of Christ some 2000-odd years ago, to the immediate present and future of Christianity. He brings together a Baptist Church in the segregationist American South with a medieval monastery in the heart of the Greek countryside; the Vatican - beautiful, imposing, vainglorious, the seat of Catholicism - with a sparse, tiny private church above the rocky coastline of Southern Japan. Twelve Churches is a quest for a new people''s history of Christianity, told through the stories of twelve churches scattered across the globe. Through a patchwork of interlinking and varied human stories, Butler-Gallie takes us on a physical and historical journey, exploring the role of hope, faith and beauty in Christianity, but also its fraught relationships with sex, violence and power. The story of Christianity is, he shows, the story of our modern world: it''s a story of who we should be, as well who we sometimes are.

Brought to you by Penguin.A laugh-out-loud memoir of becoming a 21st-century priest, Touching Cloth is also a love letter to the Prayer Book, Liverpool, lager, funerals, homemade lemon curd, and, above all, to what the Church of England can be at its best.The very word ''reverend'' inspires solemnity. To be a priest is to dedicate one''s life to quiet prayer and spiritual contemplation. Isn''t it?Fergus Butler-Gallie reveals what it''s like to become a priest in the twenty-first century. Find out why black really is slimming, how to keep a straight face when someone is inadvertently hot-boxing a funeral, and which royal-themed biscuit tin can best contain a very loud personal alarm that no one knows how to switch off. Spot a sweet old lady trying to pay for a taxi with coinage from fascist Spain? Congratulations, shepherd, she''s your problem now.Behind the daily scrapes is an all-too-human love letter to the Church of England, and the amazing variety of people who manage to keep it going, providing a listening ear, company and community at a time when so many people desperately need it, as well as a reflection on what it means to follow a spiritual path amid the chaos of the modern world.©2023 Fergus Butler-Gallie (P)2023 Penguin Audio