Being Disciples (by Rowan Williams)

(Amazon UK link)

I have known for some years that Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, was a writer. I have seen his books recommended by Amazon, referred to by other authors I respect, and mentioned by people I know with an interest in theology. So when I saw his book ‘Being Disciples’ on special offer, it wasn’t too difficult a decision to decide to buy it.

The subtitle of the book is, ‘Essentials of the Christian Life’, and there are glowing recommendations in the front of the book. It’s called an essential guide, inspiring, a gem of a book… despite being really quite short. ‘Being Disciples’ has fewer than 100 pages, so I expected to read it in just a few days. At most, I thought, a week; it has six chapters after a very brief introduction.

The book is about being disciples, and each chapter is based on a short passage of Scripture. Discipleship, the author contents, is a state of living. He is quite matter-of-fact about what it means to follow Jesus, and offers standard insights in slightly different ways: his chapter about faith, hope and love, for instance, talks about the relation of these abstracts to our understanding, memory and needs.

However, I found it surprisingly heavy reading. I don’t think I am unintelligent, and it wasn’t as if the language used was complex or hard to understand. But somehow the writing style did not really work for me. Perhaps this is because the text was not originally written as a book, but is the transcript of a series of addresses given by Rowan Williams.

In the form of talks, there would have been pauses where necessary, perhaps some feedback from the audience, maybe some visual aids. There would certainly have been variations in the tone of voice. But just as sermons written out in full beforehand tend to be rather dry (though not always), transcripts of good talks can be quite difficult to wade through when reading. I found it easier to digest if I ‘read aloud’ in my mind - but that’s not something I do naturally.

Looking at the many excellent reviews of this book, I seem to be in the minority. Perhaps I’m the only person to have found this heavy going. Whether that’s the case or not, it took me a couple of weeks to finish it, as I could only manage about four pages per sitting. Even then I often had to re-read them before I took in the content - and it’s not as if any of it was actually new to me, although I appreciated some of the different viewpoints on well-known topics.

Review by Sue F copyright 2019 Sue's Book Reviews