Fully Alive: tending to the soul in turbulent times [review]

Fully Alive: tending to the soul in turbulent times by Elizabeth Oldfield (Hodder & Stoughton, 2024)

---

Fully Alive is a fresh, thoughtful and extremely honest attempt to build a bridge between the Christian faith and those outside the church bubble. It had me hooked from the first page.

Like all the best books, this book contains jeopardy: a danger that needs to be overcome. How do we remain ‘fully alive’ in a world full of pain, injustice, insecurity and anxiety?

This is a book which takes the human struggle seriously, and recognises that the ‘monsters we need to face’ are both external and internal. The answers we need are both political and personal.  

Disconnection

Whisper it quietly, but this is a book about sin. Those things which disconnect us from each other, from ourselves and, ultimately, from God. The tendencies and traps which cause us to be less than fully alive.

I say whisper it quietly because Elizabeth Oldfield recognises the disconnecting baggage that comes with the word ‘sin’. So she borrows the term Francis Spufford coined in his book of a similar genre, Unapologetic: ‘the Human Propensity to Fuck Things Up‘.

Like Spufford, Oldfield’s regular use of swear words may jar some readers but it gives her writing an unusual form of spiritual honesty missing from many Christian books. It also illustrates her priority audience: she seeks to connect to the world beyond church culture rather than worrying about offending Christians. It is this missionary ambition: to share the hope, meaning and joy of Christian faith to those outside the church that I most appreciated.

Helpfully honest

Each chapter focuses on one of the seven deadly sins. Oldfield draws on the original meanings and ancient sources but skillfully connects them to the struggles of the contemporary world and her own life. A few of her chapter headings give you an idea of the angles she draws out: Wrath: from Polarisation to Peacemaking; Avarice: from Stuffocation to Gratitude and Generosity; and Pride: from Individualism to Community.

Her chapter on Lust: from Objectification to Sexual Humanism is helpfully honest about embracing and managing sexual desire. Her willingness to share openly about masturbation (‘I knew in my bones sex was a good thing, not least because my self-administered orgasms were so clearly a gift’) contrasts with the inadequacies of her church youth group’s discussions on the matter. This fresh kind of honesty is urgently needed in Christian discussions on sexuality.

Challenges and joys

Oldfield lives with her family in an intentional community and there are many stories of the mundane challenges and countercultural joy that comes from her living arrangements: 

‘I love living in community. And I hate it some days too. But mostly I am grateful to have manoeuvred into a situation that provides scaffolding against my own disconnecting tendencies’.

Her recognition of the need for such ‘scaffolding’ ensures that the book is rooted in real, collective experience and contains a healthy blend of grace and truth:

‘Friction can graze, or it can polish…Regular, contained conflict, which we are all committed to navigating well, feels instead like it is helping me learn.’

Rooted

She is honest about the struggles of local church but captures the beauty of relationships formed through shared worship which ‘acts as a trellis for relationships’. 

This relational emphasis elevates Fully Alive from an individualistic self-help manual or an aspirational collection of good ideas. As she puts it ‘community requires proximity’ and ‘ideals need structure’:

‘Community will always requires something of us, and that is annoying…I want the benefits without the cost. I want to know connection – love, even – without surrendering my sovereignty, my pride. But I’ve seen enough to know that this kind of healthy community is a pearl of great price, and what it asks of me is more than worth paying.’

Authentic and faithful

Instead of reading Fully Alive straight through, I took my time, reading a chapter a day, giving me time to reflect and ponder. I think it would make a great book for a sermon series, a church home group to read through together, or (even better) a book club.

I loved Fully Alive and would highly recommend it. It will be helpful for those struggling with faith, in the throes of deconstruction or for those for whom faith has never made much sense. Buy it for your friend or family member who doesn’t understand your beliefs but wants to know more. It shares an authentic understanding of human frailty and earthy guidance on the path we each take to become more fully alive. 

---

Buy Fully Alive: tending to the soul in turbulent times by Elizabeth Oldfield