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One of the pure pleasures of doing a PhD is all the reading you are forced to cram into your schedule. It’s material that you would love to read anyway, but because of all those chapters that have to be written, there’s just no excuse but to get the reading done. One thing I’ve loved over the past year is our every-other-month reading seminars with the other PhD students at the Benedict XVI centre. This has widened my reading even further as we’ve read books that I wouldn’t otherwise have looked at. I’ve also always got a leadership book on the go, and fiction’s fun too… So in this post, I wanted to share my top three under each of those headings from the last six months:
Sociology of Religion
- The Benedict Option – Rod Dreher This has become one of the much-discussed classics of the last year, and I found Dreher’s diagnosis of the culture totally convincing. His proposed solution is for Christians to network themselves together, to support each other in community, in business, in education, and intentionally keep alive our culture and values. There is much here I agree with, and I particularly resonated with the chapter on education. My only reservation is that I passionately believe Christians need to be constantly outward-facing — not just when Christianity’s in season. We need, as I heard Chris Stefanick put it, “the apostolic option”. It is not enough to retreat from the culture; we have to actively engage it and present the Christian message in it anew.
- Religion – Christian Smith Christian Smith is a social scientist of religion at the University of Notre Dame and I’ve come to be a big fan. He’s one of the few social scientists I’ve come across that approaches sociology from a critical realist (and therefore, sane!) perspective. This 2017 book is a great summary of his work on religion, and is meticulously argued and backed up. For a fascinating introduction to the sociology of religion, with some great case studies throughout, I recommend this. It’s a brilliant read.
- Habits of the Heart – Robert Bellah et al. This is an American sociological classic. In my reading, it was being quoted at every turn, so I realised it was one of those books I had to read. It fascinatingly identifies some key cultural characteristics of American private and public life. To understand these characteristics, the authors created types such as “the independent citizen”, “the entrepreneur”, “the manager” and “the therapist”. As the British religious scene is in many ways influenced by America, it is useful to become clearer about the cultural norms that influence both scenes, and how they transfer or not.
Leadership
- Leaders Eat Last – Simon Sinek I first saw Simon Sinek at the Leadership Conference in 2017 and have been a follower ever since. His leadership wisdom embodies many excellent human principles that can benefit businesses and the church alike, and his social media feed is eminently shareable. In Leaders Eat Last, Sinek tracks how business culture has become unbalanced and unhealthy, in a world where human beings are wired for safety. His leadership lessons focus on shifting culture and leading with integrity.
- Predictable Success – Les McKeown Why do some organisations and businesses – that initially succeed – sometimes plateau and eventually decline and fizzle out? Predictable Success uses a memorable graph to show the life-cycle of businesses (this can equally be applied, I believe, to charities and Church organisations) and where they can often become unstuck. The first is ‘whitewater’. Tremendous demand and growth requires systems to be put in place to channel the success. If sufficient management and systems are not put in place and they continue operating in start-up mode, it can be the beginning of the decline. There are very interesting parallels with the Catholic parish: St Benedict’s in Halifax hit “whitewater” several years ago and consciously shifted their leadership and management structures, which led to even more fruit, and a state of “predictable success”. This isn’t guaranteed though: you can soon hit ‘treadmill’… Read the book to find out more.
- Five Dysfunctions of a Team – Patrick Lencioni Lencioni’s books disarmingly draw you in. He tends to structure his books as fiction, you get sucked into the story, and eventually you’ve unwittingly taken in all these business principles. His books seem to be highly regarded in the business world (a man opposite me from the tube the other day was reading this book), and yet increasingly they’re being read by leaders in the Church (we highly recommend them in Divine Renovation). The Five Dysfunctions of a Team is a book you will want to return to again and again. You will recognise so many dysfunctional ways of operating that are so easy to slip into unless we are intentional about creating healthy team culture. A must read.
Fiction
- The Diary of a Provincial Lady – EM Delafield A 1920s Devonshire provincial lady’s fictional diary. Prepare for some laughs. This lady is hilarious and full of sass. What I love about this book is its class, and thoroughgoing Englishness, as the introduction describes it, “like a cream tea after a long, muddy country walk”. Yes, the pace of life is slower and much more pleasant, but I felt totally bonded with this lady as she navigated the problems of her 1920s life – her love of shopping seems to get her overdrawn quite regularly; she’s frequently having problems with servants; and given the half the chance, she’s slipping off to frolic around London given that her children are away at school and servants running the house. What a life. I loved her.
- As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning – Laurie Lee I’m an enormous Cider with Rosie fan, could wallow in its luxuriant language again and again, and what’s more, rumour has it I am vaguely related to author Laurie Lee! So when I saw this title I couldn’t resist. It is not as sumptuously written as Cider with Rosie, but its prose is nonetheless stunning. It tells the true story of Lee leaving his Cotswold village as a young man, with nothing but a violin, and making his way across Europe and into Spain, eventually getting caught up in the Spanish civil war. His beautifully described adventures are a pleasure to read.
- Far From the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy When I read Tess of the d’Urbervilles in sixth form, it was a total heartbreaker for me and I’ve found Hardy a little heavy ever since. I haven’t loved any so much as Far from the Madding Crowd, which was my poolside reading in Switzerland. Exquisitely told tale with beautiful characters. Loved it.
