Of all Michael Ramsey’s many books, The Christian Priest Today is perhaps the best loved and most enduring. The main part of the volume is composed of charges to ordination candidates, with an emphasis on the intellectual and devotional life of the minister in an increasingly self-sufficient world. Later chapters reflect on the ministry of the laity, the theology of priesthood and the roles of bishop and presbyter in the context of the practical meaning of divine vocation.

The Christian Priest Today is part of the new SPCK Classics series and contains a new foreword written by John Pritchard, Bishop of Oxford.

Michael Ramsey was the one hundredth Archbishop of Canterbury, and held office from 1961 to 1974. He died in 1988.