Book Review: The Ultimate Quest: A Geek’s Guide to (The Episcopal) Church

The Ultimate Quest, by Rev. Jordan Haynie Ware

If you know someone who loves Star Wars, the Harry Potter books, Battlestar Galactica, role-playing games, or anything else that could be considered “geeky”, you may want to get that person this book.

The Ultimate Quest has two Introduction sections. The first introduction explains a little about the Episcopal church for geeks. Introduction 2.0 explains a little about geek culture to Episcopalians. The rest of the book presents the Episcopalian life as a fabulous adventure quest, a real one. Spoiler alert: Jesus already won. But we still get to choose our role — priest, deacon, laity — and wear costumes, like albs, as appropriate.  And most importantly, we must “partner with God … to help make things as right as they can possibly be.” (p. 146)

This book can be quite silly at times. On p. 133 it compares the early disciples to Sokka, Katara, Suki, Toph, and Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender. (If you don’t understand that reference, no worries. At all.) But there are plenty of other books that introduce The Episcopal Church in a more traditional way. Rev. Ware’s book is contemporary and fun.

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