In Search of Richard Hooker. This item is unavailable.In Search of Richard Hooker

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. This biography, researched over many years yet designed to be accessible to the general interested reader, presents Hooker 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.

Reviewed in Church Times, 10 November 2000
"This is no dry academic monograph ... His campaign to restore Hooker to his rightful place in the intellectual pantheon is conducted with zeal, enthusiasm, and even an element of personal affection for the man he describes as "my old friend Richard Hooker". Secor is to be congratulated on his attempt to make Hooker accessible to the non-specialist reader..."