Church politics can be a surprisingly entertaining source of reading pleasure-cozy enough to be soothing in stressful times, but with enough drama to keep you awake and reading.
The granddaddy of them all is,of course, Anthony Trollope's Barchester novels, which start with the relatively short novel The Warden, making this a frequent entry point to Trollope for many readers. Here we have the tensions of who will get or lose which plum job or obscure assignment and who will marry whom, but also internecine battles between High (leaning Catholic) and Low (leaning Evangelical) Church that is a key feature of Anglicism (Episcopalian in the U.S.) There are six novels in all, with Barchester Towers being the most deeply engaged in church affairs, and most of them have at least some reference to them. Both poignant and comic, they set the stage for series yet to come.
Next up is the six-volume Church of England series by Susan Howatch, beginning with Glittering Images and running through similar soapy titles to Absolute Powers which follow three senior clergymen from 1930s through the 1960's with their now grown children in the same diocese. As well as the requisite church politics these novels are also filled with scandal, psychology, and theology making them real page turners. In several cases the plots follow real historical events- and the tale of Cathedral Dean Neville Aysgarth mirrors the private life of Herbert Asquith one time Prime Minister. Several more books continue to follow Nicholas Darrow son of one original leads if you want more.
More recently Catherine Fox's Lindford series starting with Acts and Omissions running so far to five books follows a group of clergy and worshippers in another imagined diocese in which the on-going battles between High and Low are complicated by the current day battles over the ordination of women and same-sex marriage. These stories feel light and airy as they pull off offering both comfort and real bite with great sympathy for the sorrows and triumphs of those on all sides in the battles. who are trying their best and succeeding or not amidst their very human failings.
by econoquist