A. N. Wilson is a distinguished contemporary English author and journalist whose writing constantly displays the depth of his understanding of and concern for the Church of England. Himself once a devout Anglican, albeit one of the Church's more vocal watchdogs, Wilson now writes as an outsider and an unbeliever. Yet he is still widely read and highly regarded as a commentator on the institution, and as one who is never reluctant to confront the ills which he believes responsible for its demise. / Wilson takes the church hierarchy to task for neglecting spiritual matters in favour of "issues". He employs satire to illustrate what he believes to be the general mediocrity of the clergy. In his journalism Wilson continues to lambast liturgical changes and to question modern biblical criticism. / By using representative selections from Wilson's writings as novelist, biographer, polemicist and journalist, and by chronicling his own highly publicised religious quest, this study seeks to show the dilemma of a substantial body of contemporary English Anglicans. Furthermore, the inability and impotence of the Established Church in England to meet the needs of its traditional and more moderate worshippers is adequately reflected in Wilson's work.

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