Book Reviews

Soul Survivor:
How My Faith Survived the Church

By Philip Yancey
(New York: Doubleday, 2001, 322 pp. $21.95)

Reviewed by Craig M. Kibler
December 2001
book
“‘I am the man who with the utmost daring discovered what had been discovered before,’ G.K. Chesterton declared triumphantly. ‘I did try to found a heresy of my own; and when I had put the last touches to it, I discovered that it was orthodoxy.’ Guided in part by Chesterton, I landed in a similar place after a circuitous journey.”

Growing up, Philip Yancey, like many seeking their faith in Jesus Christ, battled the psychic scars inflicted on him by his church – racism, an emphasis on the legal parsing of governance, illogical rules, and similar antics that served as incentives for a questioning mind to reject the church and, for a time, God.

His journey to a Chestertonian discovery took him on an intellectual road through the minds and works of 13 extraordinary individuals changed by the Spirit and, in the process, joy surprised Yancey with a backward Road to Damascus conversion experience.

Chesterton was but one guide in Yancey’s journey back to God; he also learned from Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, John Donne, Henri Nouwen, Annie Dillard and others. In the process, Yancey determined that he became a writer in order to “sort out words used and misused by the church of my youth.”

So, in these insightful es-says, this self-described pilgrim explores the lives and work of these remarkable people and their transforming effect – they “helped restore to me the mislaid treasures of God” – on his faith, his work, his life.

Some of the treasures he gleaned from these teachers included self-forgiveness, how to confront death, truth, the heavenly apparent in nature, facing and overcoming one’s prejudices. In learning about himself, Yancey shares a shiningly hopeful message for others struggling to find a personal faith amidst a culture and society that sometimes bludgeons the believer into questioning those beliefs.

In telling his own story, Yancey cogently provides a clear guidepost and a faithful touchstone for those traveling the same path:

“These are the people who ushered me into the Kingdom. In many ways they are why I remain a Christian today, and I want to introduce them to other spiritual seekers.”
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