Donald Coggan, Preaching: The Sacrament of the Word (New York: Crossroad Publishing, 1988),; 170 pp., $12.95, cloth.

The great carved pulpit of Canterbury Cathedral is one of the most famous preaching platforms in all the world. Likewise, the Archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the worldwide Anglican communion, commands a stature unique in Protestantism. In 1974 Donald Coggan became the one hundred and first Archbishop of Canterbury, a trust he held until his retirement in 1980. The author of several previous books, including Paul: Portrait of a Revolutionary and The Heart of the Christian Faith, Coggan has now turned to consider the place of preaching within the church.

Preaching: The Sacrament of the Word found its root in Coggan's conviction that preaching has fallen on bad times in the church. Without doubt this is the case in certain sectors of the church. Though preaching has experienced a renaissance of sorts in some churches, other churches, including numerous European state churches, have seen a continuation of the decline in the power and prestige of the pulpit. Coggan's book "springs from a conviction that it is largely for lack of an understanding of what Christian preaching is, and of the part played in it by preacher and congregation, that the Sacrament of the Word has fallen on bad days."

Consistent with his Anglican heritage, the former Archbishop sees preaching as a sacrament of the church; a sacrament with significance equal to that of the Eucharist. His vision of holistic Anglicanism is "bi-focal" -- with the focus on both the Sacrament of the Word and the Eucharist. This bi-focal vision is a healthy corrective in the context of recent tendencies in Anglicanism to offer less attention to the preaching event.

With vivid imagery Coggan recalls a dream he experienced in which he had been invited to one of his diocesan churches to preach. "When," the inviting clergy inquired, "can you come and give us a paper?" It was Coggan's horror at the thought of the Sacrament of the Word as "giving a paper" that haunted him throughout the writing of this volume. "What in fact is the difference between reading a paper to an audience and preaching to a congregation? One has heard sermons which were precisely that -- the giving of a paper, probably prepared with meticulous care, but that and nothing more." Coggan went on to consider: "Is that preaching? If not, wherein lies the difference?"

Spoken words, Coggan asserts, are inadequate to hold the meaning of the Christian revelation. "Before it we can only kneel in awe and adoration." But out of our silence before the Word must come the word of the preacher; "just because he is a preacher, [he] must seek to convey something of what he has seen, something of the awesome strength, the tender beauty, the compelling glory of the 'many-splendoured thing' which is the Gospel."

In a most enriching section the author draws from the charges given to ministers in the Anglican communion, who are commissioned as "stewards of the Word," charged by the congregation to "be among us ... as one who proclaims the Word." In the majestic words of the 1662 Prayer Book, the Bishop is charged as he accepts the Bible: "Give heed unto reading, exhortation, and doctrine. Think upon the things contained in this Book. Be diligent in them, that the increase coming thereby may be manifest unto all men."