Editorial

This year Taylor and Francis have made a change to their publishing policy that lifts the fixed limit of 70 pages for each issue of Rural Theology. I have been pleased therefore in this issue to have reduced the growing backlog of book reviews that were waiting for space. This issue contains 20 book reviews. I remain grateful to our committed team of reviewers for expanding the number and range of books now covered by this journal. I have also included in this issue two submissions of standing theology in the section ‘From a Rural Pulpit’.

This issue of Rural Theology has brought together four papers written in the tradition of empirical theology. Each of these papers presents a way in which empirical data can help to illuminate matters of theological or ecclesiological interest. Richard Vroom draws on a survey of 75 churchgoers within five rural Anglican parishes in Wales to explore signs of dormant Catholicity. Gillian and Douglas Hall draw on a survey of 509 individuals interested in Celtic Christianity to explore how this form of spirituality appeals to different types of people: sensing types, intuitive types, feeling types, and thinking types. Ursula McKenna, Tony Neal, and Leslie J. Francis present the second part of their study among 24 retired clergy listening to their experience of ministry during the Covid-19 pandemic. In this second part, they profile how these retired clergy understood the impact of the pandemic on the future of the Church of England. S. Anne Lawson draws on a new study reporting interviews with 17 rural clergy and focus groups including 33 lay people from the same parishes. These new data develop further her exploration of the phenomenon she has described as ‘the fragile rural church’. The impact of the pandemic has added importance and urgency to this strand of research.