I hugely enjoyed this book. In the early chapters especially, there is a laugh on every other page. It is a riveting account of ministerial life in the Church of England since the 1960s, depicting, as the title suggests, an era of catastrophic falling away in church attendance. Written in a style which is at once dry and vivid, with ruthless honesty and a good eye for telling detail, this is an insider’s story which will be recognised by all who have served during this period. Modern Believing October 2023 ~ Modern Believing, Review

I wanted to say that I have just read Church Going Gone and I was totally gripped by it. It’s a page turner, reflecting your skills at narrative and the very interesting characters - good, bad, and indifferent - you’ve met in your life. And added to that are your reflections on faith and the Christian message as they have evolved over your ministry. It’s a wonderful book - you’ve not wasted the time the covid restrictions produced. ~ Professor Paul Snowden, previous Head of Philosophy, University College London

I am a bit disappointed not be reading more in retirement but I do have time to write to say ‘thank you‘ when I have enjoyed something, as I did with ‘Church Going Gone’. I found many of your thoughtful reflections illuminating and helpful. Most of all I liked the attempted honesty about yourself. The four Sermons at the end were particularly good. You did a great job at St Mary’s and left a considerable legacy. There is much to admire in what you have done and how you have done it. Thank you. ~ Retired Bishop of Salisbury, Nick Holtam

........how much I’ve loved Brian’s book - for being so funny, honest, experienced, human, and for all the good gossip and good company of it. I think it should be on the reading list at every sane theological college, but since I can’t deliver that I shall continue to give it to family and friends. ~ Mari Prichard, critic and writer of The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature

......Church Going Gone is Mountford's own Apologia: compellingly readable, disjointed, amusing, wise, opinionated, radical, and occasionally annoying: convinced that Christianity "captures the seriousness, the joy and the meaning of things", but with little time for the risk-averse, managerial Church of England which he sees today. It will particularly be enjoyed by those who have shared the world that he writes about, including his regret that the ascendancy of progressive Christianity has not proved as inevitable as it once seemed. His book is an entertaining portrait of a highly coloured ministry. It is also an elegy for liberal Anglicanism. ~ The Revd. Philip Welsh, Retired., The Church Times

Rating 5*. I recommend this book as a thoroughly good read. It is above all a human story, set in a Christian setting. It will appeal equally to the general reader. I expected to be drawn most to the latter third of the book, concerning the author’s three decades in Oxford. However, this is essentially a story of the difficulties of grappling with the university in a hierarchical city, and the ultimate success achieved in overcoming the obstacles strewn in the author’s way. Rather, it is the story of the first four decades of the author’s life that I found riveting. It was a clever device to leave the chapter on the author’s Genesis, his upbringing, until half way through the book, as this keeps the reader guessing. The vignettes of the characters encountered along the way, through St Stephens, Christ Church Lancaster Gate and suburban Southgate, are brilliant. The author is totally honest as he recounts his experiences. There is much to ponder and enjoy! ~ Peter E, Amazon UK

Rating 5*. Brian Mountford's account of his career in the Church of England priesthood pulls no punches: he is refreshingly honest about his experiences and the challenges he has faced from authorities, both within the church and- as Vicar of a university church- within the University of Oxford. Mountford writes engagingly; anecdotes abound, some of them laugh-out-loud funny. Interestingly, although the book is an autobiography, it does not follow a linear course; the spotlight of attention moves to illuminate themes rather than tracking Mountford's career chronologically. As one might expect from the author of "Christian Atheist", there is much to ponder on regarding the nature of religious belief, and how twenty-first century Christians have come to understand their faith in a rapidly evolving moral sphere. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who is thinking seriously about these issues. ~ Enty, Amazon UK

Rating 5*. Brian Mountford has managed to write an account of his life as an Anglican priest in a way which is highly readable , often very funny, and also honest and thought-provoking. He is a great story-teller, with an eye for a good anecdote, and combines this with a shrewd analysis of the many challenges facing the church of England during his time in office. I really liked the way in which he has structured the book, so that we plunge straight into his life as a young priest, confronting for the first time the ecclesiastical rigidities of the established church, and thence to his subsequent career, before turning to his early life, and then on to the thirty years as a leading clergyman at the University Church in Oxford. But he also builds on the thinking about faith and doubt which he began to develop in earlier writings such as 'Christian Atheists', making this essential reading for anyone who is interested in wrestling with the great spiritual issues of our times. ~ A. MK Wilson, Amazon UK

Rating 5*. Enjoyed reading about the ecclesiastical world as it was then and is now with all its quirks ! Witty and insightful. ~ Charlesb 10, Amazon UK

This is enjoyable, encouraging and insightful read. FULL REVIEW in Progressive Voices - Issue 39 - December 2021 ~ Progressive Voices, Review

Rating 5*. I've never had the good fortune of attending a service at which Brian Mountford has preached, but I'm sure it would be a very pleasurable and enlightening experience, based on his gift for communicating that is evidenced in this excellent book. Brian presents his personal and professional life in a candid, entertaining and thought-provoking way. The ordering of material is interesting and refreshing – starting with an incredibly stressful episode in which his careers an Anglican priest was almost stopped before it had fully started, and then moving on to (sometimes) calmer waters. This piqued my interest in how he'd arrived at where the book started, and this background on his earlier life (again, not without some 'twists and turns' along the way) was provided at just the right time. Much of the book deals with Brian's 30 years at the University Church in Oxford, and the 'highs and lows' of such a prestigious, and yet potentially perilous. position. We are also given some very good insights into Brian's theology, views on the Church of England and its structure, and concerns and hopes, as he's witnessed the increasing and seemingly relentless secularisation of British society during his life time. Towards the end of the book, we are also given further insights through an imagined 'interview with God' and some examples of his sermons preached at St Mary's in Oxford (so at least I've got to read some of his sermons!). The book has some extremely poignant moments, and some extremely amusing (indeed, 'laugh out loud') moments and character portrayals. I wish i'd been at an interview where the interviewer (and a clergyman at that!) shouted 'bring the poor b...d a cup of tea"!! ~ Ian, Amazon UK

Rating 5*. This is a truly wonderful autobiography which manages to achieve something which so many books concerning faith fail to do - entirely humanizing its subject while remaining tantalizing on questions of spirituality and belief, as well as telling a compelling tale of a life in the Church of England from the middle of the twentieth century to the present day. Occasional churchgoers, such as myself, are fascinated by what it must mean to give your life in service to the church, but don't fully comprehend the day to day experience of doing so. We assume a priest takes a few services throughout the week and visits the sick. This book changes all that - taking us through the many stages of a priest's career with a deft storytelling hand. The author has the touch of a great writer of literary fiction (indeed he has published a number of collections of stories) and it shows. The first section of the book is often hilarious, as the young curate, striding around London in the 60's has to deal with the vestiges of Victoriana - not only in furnishings and old ladies of the parish, but with bosses trying to rein in his youthful romantic passions. We meet a host of characters and laugh out loud at their bon mots... As Mountford grows older, more serious concerns impinge, as he discusses tragedies in his family with startling honesty. He starts to regret courses of action he has taken, even as he is taking them, and the next section of the book shows us why this might be. We flashback to fill in his childhood, which roots us in a post war London so vivid you can almost taste the fog in the air as you travel on the 38 bus with the young boy contemplating the priesthood. The author's childhood family dynamics are sometimes painful, yet he ascends to become the Vicar of St. Mary the Virgin in Oxford where he builds a rich, vibrant community and tells fascinating and funny stories about the famous folk who passed through during his 30 year tenure, as well as offering his serious thoughts on a variety of theological questions plus an appendix of his sermons. This book is highly recommended for seekers of all persuasions. ~ The Lady Orlando, Amazon US

Rating: 5*. Not having read many autobiographies by priests of the Church of England, I can’t be sure, but I’d lay a bet that you won’t find another one as entertaining, fascinating and disarmingly honest as this one. Tracing his life from ordination in the 1960s to his first post in a Westminster parish, where the vicar ruled his life with a shockingly mediaeval authority, through a variety of parishes, the author finally lands the position of vicar at the University Church of St Mary the Virgin in Oxford. There he spends the greatest part of his career, greatly increasing the congregation and using the church’s central position in Oxford (and national) life to champion liberal Anglicanism in its most humane, creative, tolerant and life-enhancing form. His love of music, art, literature and intellectual debate made St Mary’s a stimulating environment to people of all kinds, whether religious or not, and his strong belief in the wideness of spiritual experience (who else but Mountford could have coined the term, the Christian Atheist?) leaps from the pages. Beautifully written, with a wry self-deprecation that doesn’t prevent him from skewering the way the autocratic structure of the Church of England allows inordinate power to pen-pushers and people pleasers, this book makes you hope fervently that Mountford is not the last of his kind. ~ Orange, Amazon UK

CHURCH GOING GONE is the work of a man of great goodness, considerable stubbornness, and and not a little cunning. How can a person of liberal, humane, and imaginative instincts survive in the modern Church of England? Brian Mountford has not only survived, but for thirty years had the living of St Mary’s, the University Church in Oxford, the site of events of enormous consequence such as the trial of the Oxford Martyrs in 1555, and the centre of a busy and intellectually challenging modern parish. In the course of his life as a priest Mountford aroused enormous admiration not only for his liberal stance but also for his personal qualities of kindness and open-mindedness, and for the imaginative (and occasionally provocative) way in which he welcomed speakers from many different traditions to his church. All his qualities are vividly present in this book, as well as a lively gift for scene-setting and character-drawing. I enjoyed it enormously. ~ Philip Pullman

Brian Mountford has written a witty and captivating memoir. He brilliantly evokes the utterly different world of the Church of England in the late sixties and, through the story of his own ministry, offers a fascinating - and sobering - perspective on the sea changes that the Church has undergone over the past fifty years. ~ Professor Jane Shaw

I’ve just finished Church Going Gone and enjoyed it immensely. How life has changed even - oh gosh one hopes - within the church! Your thunderclap of an opening is a stroke of genius; for a moment I wondered if you were channelling one of those BBC clergy sitcoms of the 1970s, in which by a series of hilarious mishaps, the poor, respectable curate is denounced for wild sexual shenanigans… but to find that’s exactly what happened to you, thanks to your filthy-minded vicar, beggars belief. And then you forgave the rotter, decades later, when he apologised - which I know is what we’re meant to do - but I’d have found it hard, considering what he put you through at the time. You write beautifully, giving a valuable insight into a clergyman’s life and the inscrutable (actually, a bit of open scrutiny is much to be desired), partial, archaic structure of the C of E, while your own enlightened, creative, generous, all-embracing interpretation of liberal christianity shines through. This is such an unusual memoir for all these reasons and I hope you sell lots of copies. ~ Griselda Heppel - children's author

How much I am enjoying reading 'Church Going Gone'. It is a most interesting account not only of your progression into the Church, but so wittily written. I have to keep reading passages to my wife. At the same time, your reflections introduce insights into the Christian Heritage which I find very enlightening. It is an excellent coming together of your personal story, the Christian message, the social and political context of the Church, and the mission of the University Church within the wider University. ~ Richard Pring, sometime Professor of Education, University of Oxford

Favourites quotes from book 35 People don’t want to hear from a person for whom spiritual confidence is a matter of effortless ease; they don’t want sugared certainties; they prefer faith that has been through the mill and faced up to the realities of life 47 … in recent Church life the agenda has been set by self-regarding structural concerns: should gay people or women be admitted as priests and bishops of the Church? Who should be allowed to get married in Church? … Naturally, we have also puzzled over how to make Christianity relevant in a secular culture. 51 a radical, questioning, protesting faith 95 Here is the universal human anxiety about self-worth, the cry for personal identity and purpose within the mind-bending scale of things. 100 I was willing to disturb the universe, if only to stop the Church of England from falling asleep 104 Sometimes people can only discover their “hunger to be more serious” … when they are presented with opportunities for seriousness, when they are shown the menu 111 I advocated the ideal of lifelong commitment, but not lifelong misery. (marrying divorcees in Church.) 120 today’s managerial church 121 A major social institution cannot be totally out of gear with the society it exists in. It can be in critical dialogue with the spirit of the age, but not alienated. 172 what university churches should be doing ...challenging faith while trying to build it up. 173 They speak about deep matters in a language comprehensible to a secular society. 217 a question requires doubt 223 It is easy to confuse antipathy towards religious institutions … with indifference towards the spiritual. 232 …when i experience meaning, purpose, beauty, love or hope, I have reason to think there is something deep and dynamic underlying life and this fills much of the space I call God. 255 Christianity is not a given, not a commodity or possession, or membership card, but a relationship - with each other and with God’s purposes, however we discern them. ~ Sarah Lloyd MD of BBC's QI

Before I'd got to page 20 I'd already laughed out loud (several times) and had been very moved. The voice is keen, and the writing balanced and elegant. ~ Penny Boxall, Prize-winning Scottish Poet.

This charming and deeply insightful book is a real pleasure to read, and has the power to make its readers rethink their most basic beliefs. ~ John Simpson, English foreign correspondent and world affairs editor of BBC News

Brian Mountford senses our deep hunger to have answers to the big questions; part of his deeply liberal, protesting faith is to encourage us all to keep on asking. ~ Sarah Lloyd MD of BBC's QI

CHURCH GOING GONE is the work of a man of great goodness, considerable stubbornness, and and not a little cunning. How can a person of liberal, humane, and imaginative instincts survive in the modern Church of England? Brian Mountford has not only survived, but for thirty years had the living of St Mary’s, the University Church in Oxford, the site of events of enormous consequence such as the trial of the Oxford Martyrs in 1555, and the centre of a busy and intellectually challenging modern parish. In the course of his life as a priest Mountford aroused enormous admiration not only for his liberal stance but also for his personal qualities of kindness and open-mindedness, and for the imaginative (and occasionally provocative) way in which he welcomed speakers from many different traditions to his church. All his qualities are vividly present in this book, as well as a lively gift for scene-setting and character-drawing. I enjoyed it enormously. ~ Philip Pullman