SLG Press is a small publishing house run by the Community of the Sisters of the Love of God (SLG), an Anglican contemplative community based in Oxford, England. We are supported by the community and also by the charity, SLG Charitable Trust Limited. Our work is carried out by Sisters with the help of lay staff.
We have grown from small beginnings in 1967 and have gained an international reputation for short, high-quality works of Christian spirituality. The work we do accords with centuries of monastic tradition, in which study and writing accompany our life of prayer and reflection upon the Word of God, combined with community living.
SLG Press was founded at a time when the community had increasingly become aware that a significant aspect of the contemplative life is a longing to share with others what we have ourselves received. St Thomas Aquinas (c.1225-74) used the Latin words contemplata aliis tradere, usually now translated as ‘to contemplate, and to hand on to others the fruits of contemplation’.
We publish a magazine, the Fairacres Chronicle, twice a year and books to help and support people who desire to take prayer seriously. This general intention broadens out to a variety of topics relating to the spiritual life – studies of those who have made a significant contribution to Christian teaching on prayer over the centuries, for instance, as well as theological reflection on the gospels and on themes as diverse as poetical writing, ministry, suffering and death, and pilgrimage.
We draw from the wisdom of the Desert Fathers, early monastic saints, the fourteenth-century English mystics, the tradition of Carmel and other ancient and modern-day teachers of prayer. Some of the books we write or translate ourselves, some come from our wide circle of contacts, and some come via authors’ submissions.
We rejoice to be able to communicate through the published word the things which are important to us. For us, this work is holy ground.
The Christianity which we proclaim,
the faith which we hold,
is not just the bare letter of the Gospel,
but it is the life of Christ,
present in every age
in the lives of the saints,
Christ’s life down the centuries.
A. M. Allchin, Warden of the Community 1967-95
