Crack the crisp pages of a newly published book and you may find an interesting, sometimes fascinating, reference to the church here and abroad. In the current treasure trove, they run a gamut from Dean Acheson's birth in a Connecticut rectory to Winston Churchill's funeral at St. Paul's Cathedral. All offer an extra dimension as part of the color, drama, and historical documentation, in the long story of human hopes, frailty and dignity enfolded in the life of the church. Some excerpts:

Emotionally drained and physically spent, Fr. Clochard-Bossuet was relieved when the Rev. Martin Draper from St. George's Anglican Church in Paris arrived to take his place at Diana's bier ... [Elsewhere in the hospital] Prince Charles, his pale blue eyes brimming with tears, turned to a nurse, "Madame, could we have an Anglican priest?" Within minutes, Fr. Draper and Fr. Clochard-Bossuet joined them ... [and] Fr. Draper led them in reciting the Lord's Prayer ... At 6 p.m., the casket was carried down the main staircase ... [led by] Fr. Draper, wearing a surplice over his cassock, a Bible clasped in his hands.

[In Cleveland, in the late 1870s] as far as fashion or convenience went, it would have have behooved the Rockefellers to attend the nearby St. Paul's Episcopal Church, where elegant couples stepped from tony carriages each Sunday morning. Instead, they drove back ... to a plain brownstone church [Euclid Avenue Baptist] with a tall, narrow steeple and a lower middle-class congregation ... [and] arriving in Manhattan, they joined the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church ... It never occurred to the Rockefellers to trade up to a more socially prestigious denomination. "Most Americans when they accumulate money climb the golden spires of the nearest Episcopal Church," H.L. Mencken later observed. "But the Rockefellers cling to the primeval rain-god of the American hinterland and show no signs of being ashamed of him." They would not have felt comfortable with the splendor and formality of a high-church denomination.

[On Mrs. McCormick's death] a blizzard of memos and telegrams went out ... including the Chicago Tribune religion editor and a local pastor, asking them to pull whatever strings were necessary to consecrate the burial plot - under Presbyterian auspices if possible, Episcopal or Catholic if necessary ... He may have buried a wife, but not his business acumen. His wife had been in her grave less than four months when the widower shared his latest brainstorm with Howard Ellis of the Tribune law firm. "If I deed the burial lot to the Episcopal Church," inquired McCormick, "won't the mausoleum be a gift to the Episcopal Church and tax exempt?"

In September 1904, J. Pierpont Morgan entertained the Archbishop of Canterbury, Randall Davidson, and his wife in Maine. Morgan escorted them to Bar Harbor and early Sunday morning, he took a large party by yacht to Northeast Harbor where the archbishop was to preach. Bishop Lawrence [of Massachusetts] and his family joined them ... for a sumptuous feast of a nine-course breakfast ... On Sept. 22, Morgan took Archbishop Davidson to Washington to dine with Theodore Roosevelt at the White House, and then to Boston for General Convention. As usual, Morgan rented a house with full staff and had 56 people to dinner. Bishop Lawrence one day asked the Davidsons whether they would like a rest, a walk or a drive. "Oh, a walk," they eagerly replied. "Mr. Morgan has carried us everywhere, and we have not felt the American soil!"

[Future Secretary of State] Dean Acheson was born on April 11, 1893, in the brick rectory of Holy Trinity Church [Middletown, Conn.] where his father had arrived as pastor a year earlier. Edward Campion Acheson had completed his education by studying for the Anglican ministry at a theological seminary, Wycliffe College of the University of Toronto, from which he graduated in 1889 and was made a curate at All Saints' Church in that city. Wycliffe had been founded in 1877 by a local Anglican evangelical movement that had rebelled against the powerful "high-church" Anglicanism that then prevailed at Toronto's Trinity College. Outside of this tradition, emphasizing the supremacy of the scripture accompanied by evangelical fervor, Edward Acheson practiced a Christianity that stressed moral imperatives within a "low-church" ritual ... [Dean] seemed to flaunt his rebellious temperament, that "wild Ulster streak" he believed he had inherited from his accomplished father - who in 1915 rose to Episcopal heights as Bishop of Connecticut.

[In the spring of 1964] 150 persons assembled in the half-finished nave of Washington Cathedral at 11 o'clock for a traditional burial service according to the Book of Common Prayer. Six honorary pallbearers - Robert Cushman Murphy, Edwin Way Teale, Senator Abraham Ribicoff, Interior Secretary Stewart Udall, Charles Callison of the National Aubudon Society, and Rachel's loyal friend Bob Hines - carried Rachel's bronze casket down the aisle and took their places on the front row opposite the family. Bishop Creighton offered prayers for those who had died at sea, at the request of Robert Carson, who thought them appropriate [because of his sister's ecological best sellers]. There were no memorial remarks. A large wreath of red and white flowers was prominently placed at the foot of steps leading to the high altar, a tribute from Prince Philip of England [head of the World Wildlife Fund].

"[Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis'] relationship with the Municipal Art Society began when we were trying to save Grand Central Station," said the writer Brendan Gill ... "This kind of thing kept coming up over and over. Take, for example, the question of St. Bartholomew's Church. The idea that just because the church had the good fortune to have a garden on Park Avenue, which it wanted to sell for $50 million tax free so some developer could build a skyscraper on it - that was a scandal. So Jackie was out there on the vigil. And the rector, the Rev. Thomas Bowers, denounced Jackie and me from his pulpit as "architectural idolaters." In our fight against St. Bartholomew's, if we were able to tell the media that Jackie was going to come ... the media would gush, and a couple of local politicians would even dare to kiss her for the cameras. She subjected herself to that kind of soiling and abuse for our sake."

[When] the impeccably dressed, well-mannered delegates from St. Mark's, Birmingham, went to an Alabama diocesan conference, entered the hall, and moved to seat themselves in a cordoned-off section, a white usher discreetly admonished them, "You can't sit here, these seats are reserved for the niggers from St. Mark's." With great hauteur, the pale-skinned, supposed interlopers courteously responded to the gaping aide, "Sir, we are the niggers from St. Mark's."

At a time when she was scrimping everywhere for her museum's endowment she gave to the Cowley Fathers, in April of 1919, so princely a gift, with which to buy the remaining land necessary in Cambridge, that the then superior, Spence Burton, wrote to acknowledge the society's debt without reserve ... and Time magazine would go further ... reasoning, as most would, that a monk's inherited family money in the nature of things must go to his order, and that Gardner ought rightfully to be considered the founder of the monastery of the American congregation of Anglicanism's oldest monastic order for men. It is a view the Cowley Fathers would take no exception to today.

In order to clear the way for her marriage to Joseph Albright, Madeleine had to change religions. Members of his family were Episcopalians and were adamantly opposed to his marrying a Catholic. "It would have been easier if you were a Jew than a Catholic," Joe's mother told Madeleine ... Because she was a practicing Catholic, Madeleine's conversion to Episcopalianism was more than just a formality. After her divorce from Joe, she would be drawn back to Roman Catholicism, at least briefly. As Geraldine Ferraro's foreign policy adviser, she attended Mass regularly with the Democratic vice-presidential candidate during the 1984 election campaign. The two women talked about how hard it had been for Madeleine to walk away from the Catholic Church: "If you took away my religion ... I would say, 'Hey, give me a break!'..." The wedding itself, in St. Andrew's Protestant [Episcopal] Church [in Wellesley, Mass.], was small but formal.

[In arranging Virgil's memorial concert] we encountered only one problem in planning the service: the Very Rev. James P. Morton, dean of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine ... We explained that we wanted there to be no spoken tributes; only a recording of Virgil's voice would be heard; although words from his eminence would otherwise be an honor, it would negate the concept of the entire memorial. But Dean Morton ... virtually insisted that he would at the very least have to welcome the guests to what was, after all, his parish. We relented, asking that he truly keep his remarks to a few moments of welcome. On the day of the memorial ... the cathedral, filled to capacity ... Dean Morton mounted the ornate pulpit ... [for] what turned out to be a lengthy, pompous, and inaccurate tribute to Virgil Thomson, whom he barely knew. Basic facts of Virgil's life were incorrect ... inaccuracies that would have driven Virgil crazy. Worst of all, he stated that "every detail of this memorial was planned by Virgil Thomson himself," so as to make sure that no one "loused it up." How he came to that conclusion we could not fathom ... Virgil was too ill to make any decisions ... [and] planning his own memorial was one thing he would not have done. Clearly, only some close colleagues were going to be able to participate, and Virgil would have been uncomfortable choosing among his champions. Of course, coming from such an authoritative source, the newspaper reporters in attendance accepted it. So misinformation wound up in almost every account. We were outraged. We all were.

The school hymn is "Once to Every Man and Nation." That hymn was thrown out of the Episcopal hymnal ... on the grounds that it was "sexist and war-like" - "Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide, in the fight of truth with falsehoods for the good or evil side." It's such a great hymn.

[At the funeral of my grandfather, former Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill] at St. Paul's, the Royal Navy detachment made way for an eight-man bearer-party of Grenadier Guardsmen, who hoisted the heavy coffin to their shoulders and bore it haltingly up the steps of the great cathedral ... The service was a great national outpouring of emotion and grief before the representatives of 110 nations. All present sensed that they were witnessing the passing of an era - the severing of the link with the man who had led them through the years of "blood, toil, tears and sweat" to glorious victory. As the service drew to its close, trumpeters, high above in the gallery, sounded the Last Post which reverberated hauntingly under the great dome. Total silence followed as the echoes died away, before a single trumpeter sounded Reveille.

[Deciding not to marry the divorced Peter Townsend] Princess Margaret went to Lambeth Palace on the evening of Oct. 27, 1955, to see Dr. Geoffrey Fisher, the Archbishop of Canterbury. "When the Princess entered," wrote Randolph Churchill, she said - and the words are worthy of Queen Elizabeth I - "Archbishop, you may put your books away; I have made up my mind already." This romanticized account surprised Dr. Fisher. "I had no books of any sort spread around," he told his biographer, William Purcell. "The Princess came and I received her, as I would anyone else, in the quarters of my own study. She never said, 'Put away those books' because there were not any books to put away." Princess Margaret's own account is undoubtedly the correct one. Having greeted her, the archbishop went over to a bookcase to take out a reference book. "Put it back," said the Princess crisply. "I have come to give you information, not to ask for it." She then told him of her decision not to marry Peter Townsend. "What a wonderful person the Holy Spirit is," said a beaming Dr. Fisher.

He celebrated the service of Holy Communion with meticulous correctness, exactly as he had learned to do [at the Community of the Resurrection] at Mirfield 20 years earlier. To an expert in these matters, he would have seemed a trifle old-fashioned. He still wore the stole crosswise, rather than letting it hang straight. He wore a maniple. After the consecration he still held thumb and forefinger together until all the sacred elements had been consumed. While he did so, he thought of the morning chores which stretched ahead ... thoughts and impressions that swam in and out of his mind as he said the familiar words of the Anglican Mass. He also thought of Christianity. How it had been there, time out of mind, and how, since the Dark Ages at least, it had been a force for civilization and learning and kindness in a world often hostile to these values. Without the monks of St. Benedict we should, in all likelihood, have no Tacitus, no Ovid, no Virgil. For this reason alone, it was worth getting up early on a winter morning to stand at the holy table.

The Rev. James B. Simpson is TLC's Washington correspondent.