Monday, April 6, 2009

The Churches Together Bookshop, Cardiff


Continuing In Many Bookshops with Mr. Charmley, we come to the Churches Together Bookshop, Cardiff. Formerly the SPCK bookshop, the shop suffered in the takeover of SPCK by St. Stephen the Great Charitable Trust and the subequent collapse of the organisation. It was bought out and re-opened as the Churches Together Bookshop.

It is located at the liturgically West end of the City URC, and as the name suggests, it is an ecumenical bookshop that sells all sorts of things. Now, Cardiff has a Catholic Truth Society bookshop, so the Roman Catholics have their own shop, and therefore this shop is fairly liberal. Cardiff has three Evangelical bookshops, and they will most likely have what a Reformed Evangelical would be looking for. The Churches Together shop probably won't, although it's just possible that they may.

Nevertheless, this shop has some good points. The first is the staff, who I found extremely friendly and welcoming, ready to help. They made me feel welcome in the shop, and I am sure that they would do their best to help any customer. Second, they have a good selection of second-hand books. I got a copy of Leon Morris' The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross at a very reasonable price here. So I liked the shop, even though I did not find a lot of good material there. Nice but vague, a wonderful description of liberalism! But then, it did say 'Churches Together Bookshop' on the front, so what can you expect?

[NB. This is an opinionated blog post that reflects the opinions of the author and probably no-one else]

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Thanks for these bookshop reviews - thought you'd like to know they're being tracked on the UKCBD blog: Mystery Shopper: In Many Bookshops with Mr Charmley

Unknown said...

I have recently been responsible for setting up a small bookroom in our Church here in Glasgow-St.George's-Tron(right in the middle of the city).
Give us a view if you are ever in the city!