One thing I experience regularly, as a Guide in Canterbury Cathedral in the UK, is a hunger in visitors from the USA to recover the ancient past; including the Christian element in the ancient past.

My book “The Mustard Seed” tells how those who became the English first became Christian. However, it can be understood more broadly than that. It also recounts how the ancestors of the English speakers became Christian. And it recovers this for a period during which the USA did not exist as we now know it.

One thing I also find with many English speaking people of Protestant Christian background is that there is an enormous time gap in their knowledge – between the Early Church and the Protestant Reformation, how did their Christian background descend? From the early 300’s to the middle 1500’s, what happened? I encounter this often for USA folk, with their high proportion of Protestant-background Christians. What happened between the Early Church and the Protestant Reformation? Was the entire period like the late Medieval Church that the Protestants had a mission to Reform? Was every Christian from 300 to 1500 the caricature of superstition that descended out of the turmoil of the Reformation?

Well, no. The Christian Awakening in the Anglo Saxons in the 600’s was the second most transformative in the last 2,000 years. Only the transformation of Old Rome in the times of the Early Church exceeded it. No comparable movement in modern times has been as root and branch transformative of an entire people, wherever in the world. That didn’t happen out of superstition and ritual. It happened out of Christian faith at its most dynamic; and through Christian figures who, if they lived today, would be asked by many a modern Christian movement to come along and show how it’s done.

In my book, “The Mustard Seed”, I recover so much that has been lost to our modern understanding; so much that many are hungry, in my experience, to rediscover. I can only tell you my reaction as I researched some of the lost figures you will encounter in the book:

• Saint Martin of Tours – where have you been hiding all my life? The Christian Life that was in you saved Western civilisation, no less. Martin, you were the missing link between what had been in Jesus Christ and the Apostle Paul and its onward transmission to the western world. But… dear reader, have you even heard of him? I think you will love discovering how much descended from him. Perhaps the title “Saint” puts you off? Well, titles were the last thing that mattered to Martin. Think of him as the Good Guy of all the Good Guys.
• Saint King Oswald of Northumbria – why did nobody tell me about you? The nation of the Christian English descends from you down to this day. Dear reader, perhaps the name “Oswald” puts you off? See it like this then: he was Early England’s Christ figure; more like “King Arthur” than King Arthur; and for real, not for legend. The image on the book cover is an impression of him. I think you will love him.
• Queen Bertha of Kent (Kent is the south east corner of what we now call England). Your story demands to be told. The worldwide Anglican Communion originates from you. You have been so much under-rated; systematically overlooked.
• King Ethelbert of Kent, Bertha’s noble husband. You were the seed of so much that we value in rulership in the west. Your conversion to Christ was one of the great Turning Point moments in all human history. We can’t get past your old fashioned name though – Ethelbert. Truly, you deserve to be recovered.

Those were my reactions. I hope they may be yours too, as you read “The Mustard Seed”.  And that your hunger to recover the lost past will begin to be satisfied…