About Bookish Priest

I'm Andrew Rampton and, as the site name suggests, I'm a bookish priest. I love reading and I like to think and talk and write about what I read. A good book, fiction or nonfiction, always sparks the imagination. For nonfiction, I mostly read theology, church history, liturgical studies, and other work related to my work as a priest. I'm also interested in urban design and productivity tools and philosophies. When it comes to fiction, I'm always interested in a good fantasy novel, but also read literary fiction, historical fiction, horror, the occasional cozy novel, and a bit of sci-fi.

I'm a priest of the Anglican Church of Canada, currently appointed as rector of the Church of St John the Evangelist, Hamilton, in the Diocese of Niagara. My faith and my vocation inform everything in my life. The content on this site reflects that.

The posts on this site come in three major groups:

• Book Reflections: where I share my thoughts and reflections from recent reading, usually about theology and church-related matters. For fiction and other bookish stuff, you can find me on Instagram and The Storygraph.
• Articles: longer thinkpieces where I explore ideas of interest to me.
• Preaching: sermons and pastoral letters that I preach and write in my work as a priest.

This thinking, writing, and, I hope, the conversations that come from them are not efforts at certainty, gatekeeping, or drawing lines in the sand. Rather, I hope they can be seen and heard as explorations and expressions of curiosity about God, Creation, and all things sacred. Cole Arthur Riley, the curator of www.blackliturgist.com wrote this prayer and it seems fitting to share with you here:

God of all mystery,
It is liberating to be with a God who seems more interested in our presence and attunement to the spiritual, than a precise articulation of it. The demand for certainty is exhausting and alienating. Help those of us inclined toward intellectual exploration to do so not out of idolatry or superiority but out of sacred curiosity—that curiosity which is capable of reason without becoming enslaved to it. And protect those of us whose encounters with the divine cannot be met with words or precise language. let us stand strong in mystery, without pressure to name every sacred thing. Help those in bondage to certainty, turn toward these voices and spiritual expressions as a beautiful guide. And as we make space for the mysterious, let us expand into our liberated selves.