A Pilgrimage Towards Peace
by Joan Simpkins. Published by sessions of York, the Ebor Press, York. £12.49 including post and packing.

This is a fascinating book for a variety of different reasons and at £12.49, including postage and packing it must be the snip of the year. The book is autobiographical and fascinating because Joan's life as been fascinating. One of the supreme concerns of Joan's life has been pacifism. Her considerable academic achievements led to a thesis and a book published by S P C K on the Christian doctrine of the just war. They can be few people today who have studied the teachings of Thomas Aquinas and Grotius on which the doctrine is based. Even fewer who have studied them in Latin, but Joan has studied in Latin the New Testament Greek and in Hebrew.

There are probably not many Christians who know what the doctrine of the just war actually is. Joan demonstrated that it is an attempt to defend the indefensible. Pacifists and non-pacifists alike can agree there is no such thing as a just war.

Joan's work for pacifism and her work as a lecturer in religious education led to two tours in the USA, to a number of publications on the comparison of different religions and of different varieties of the Christian religion. Throughout her life she has wrestled with the kind of intellectual problems with which religion faces thoughtful people.

Only in the latter stages of her life has she finally move from Christianity to Humanism. The last chapters of her book are severely critical of the Bible portrayal of God as a ferocious and merciless god of battles. She shows that nobody knows who or what "God" is and that Jesus was not divine. She also shows how modern Christians struggle with the concept of the resurrection.

She is severely critical of the Roman Catholic claims to authority based on the most tenuous of unhistorical threads; and she is severely critical of the Roman Catholic teaching on the central Christian rite, variously known as the Eucharist, the Holy Communion and the Lord's Supper.

Depth of scholarship and long and wide experience give Joan's views considerable weight and make them worthy of our own careful examination and study. Joan's pacifism means that she would not agree with me that the proof-reader deserves to be shot!

The preface (to an early draft of the book) by Donald Soper demonstrates that this is a book that has been long in the making.

Review by Leslie Scrase.