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Review of Greg Sheridan, How Christians Can Succeed Today: Reclaiming the Genius of the Early Church, Allen & Unwin, 2025.

In the Lord of the Rings the elves give Frodo and his fellowship a flask of Miruvor, a golden liquor which they sip in dispirited moments of biting cold and hunger. It warms and invigorates them, gives them strength for the next stretch.

Greg Sheridan’s How Christians Can Succeed Today mostly has that effect.

It was written in two parts to fortify the church as it pursues the Great Commission in a milieu resembling, in many ways, the non-Christian world into which the early church set forth.

Part One, “The Revolutionary Christians of the Early Church”, begins with a bracing introduction to the pagan Roman Empire, a terrifically violent “might makes right” culture that no sane person would want to return to. Next, an introduction to Paul’s missionary journeys which stretched from Jerusalem to Rome. We hear of Paul’s astonishing flexibility in connecting his message to his audience. Sheridan then describes the sexually dissolute city of Corinth and how Christians won hearts and minds, and provided a new vision of the dignity of women, the family, and the human body. Finally, Sheridan shows how Christians tended to the dying and died bravely, and how the church revolutionised attitudes towards slaves, money, and children.

The chapter on “Augustine, first and greatest modern” is in fact a winsome overview of the early church fathers. It will make every Christian want to plunder this scandalously overlooked goldmine of theological and practical riches.

Part Two presents riveting biopics of a diverse range of “Contemporary Early Christians”: Christians who live and serve today with the conviction and courage of the early church. Sheridan personally interviewed every person, and they are without exception hugely interesting, challenging, and encouraging.

First, Leila and Danny Abdullah, Lebanese Christians who forgave the young man who – under the influence of drugs and alcohol – ran over and killed three of their children in a moment. It echoes the power of Erika Kirk’s recent forgiveness of the young man who shot her husband. Forgiveness is indeed at the heart of Christian faith.

Next we meet Jess Echeverry, a “Catholic Charismatic nun” who prays for hours every day and serves the homeless.

Chapter 8 introduces three leaders. First, Catholic Bishop Robert Barron whose online sermons – brief, learned, relevant – reach tens of millions. Then Mark Varughese, a Malaysian Pentecostal pastor whose Kingdom City churches may be taking over where Hillsong left off. Jordan Peterson needs no introduction, though I am thankful to Sheridan for pushing him to clarify his Christian beliefs: he confesses that Christ is the Son of God who rose bodily from the tomb on Easter Sunday.

Chapter 10 is the highlight of the book, an intelligent and remarkably probing interview with Marilynne Robinson, an author whom Sheridan describes as “the greatest Christian novelist of the twenty-first century.” Having just read Gilead and Housekeeping I can see why.

Sheridan’s interview with Mike Pense steers away from political hot potatoes to focus on how the former Vice President’s faith underpinned a long and distinguished public service career. Pense seems humble, godly, reflective.

Chapter 12 begins with a fine fourteen-page introduction to classical Christian education and how the demand for it is rapidly growing amidst the collapse of moral certainty and educational standards in the West. “In a distressed and bleeding culture, these classical schools are field hospitals . . . base camps . . . signs of new creation.” In Australia, Campion College is a leading light in mostly Catholic liberal arts training.

The remainder of chapter 12 introduces the outstanding Scottish historian Niall Ferguson. (I found the chapter breakdowns irregular: sometimes they cover one main subject but sometimes, a little clumsily, they take in two or three without any self-evident connection.) Ferguson is yet another public intellectual who has turned in recent years towards the Christian faith. He is very clear on the harm that the West’s rejection of its Christian heritage has brought.

The penultimate chapter introduces Dallas Jenkins and the phenomenon of The Chosen, an expansive dramatization of the Gospels over five series so far. Though much back story has been imagined, Sheridan praises the series’ fidelity to the substance of the Gospels, and its artistic quality which has attracted billions of views.

How Christians Can Succeed concludes by answering the question, “What is to be done?” We live in “an apostolic age” in that we, like the apostles, labour to take the Gospel to a largely unbelieving world which often deems us, according to Carl Trueman, “immoral and seditious.” We, like Paul, need “situational awareness”, to understand the world in which we witness. Cowardice is always a temptation. Sheridan urges that we ought to get better at using social media, “which is tricky because there are elements of it which are antithetical to prayer and meditation.” We must be good citizens. We must champion persecuted Christians in other lands.

Sheridan’s peroration urges for:

Passionate leadership that works like crazy; clear beliefs, culturally radical beliefs; uncompromising, bold, unembarrassed, confident, supernatural beliefs; beautiful worship music, whatever the style might be; a culture of welcome . . . ; active pews . . . ;  a sense of the personal experience of God.

John Wesley exemplified all of this.

There’s a lot more good stuff and Sheridan says that Christ’s promise that he will build his church and that the gates of hell will not prevail against it means that “As long as Christians don’t give up, they will never lose. We have that on the very best authority.”

To whom would I recommend How Christians Can Succeed? What makes this difficult is that Sheridan – a “gifted amateur” of the subject – defines Christianity in a minimalist “the-Apostles’-Creed-is-enough” kind of way. He puts Catholics, Protestants, and Pentecostals on an equal footing without any value distinction, though his cradle Catholicism frequently breaks through.

But despite the common ground, Catholics and Protestants are profoundly divided on matters of first importance such as church authority, the sacraments, and soteriology. It is not true that the early church “chose … which books would become part of the stable canon of Scripture”, but that it recognised God-inspired Scriptures. The difference is profound. Nor is it true, as Sheridan writes, that “Lydia opened her heart to listen eagerly to what Paul said.” Rather “the Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message” (Acts 16:14). Again, a momentous difference. “Salvation”, writes Sheridan, “comes only through the free gift of grace from God. But we need to be ready to receive the gift.” Yet it is precisely grace that creates this readiness.

Sheridan interprets Christ’s warning that “unless you change and become like little children you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” to mean that we must come to him with the “innocence and humility” of the child. Both David (Psalm 51) and Augustine (Confessions) denied the existence of such innocence and Jesus referred rather to the absolute dependency of the little child. Again, the difference is momentous. A favourable description of the “Adoration of the blessed Sacrament” is another case in point. And although Sheridan speaks of Pentecostalism favourably, many Protestants see Pentecostal mysticism and claims of the miraculous as historically and theologically harmful to the Gospel cause.

Sheridan rightly applauds the Nicene Creed. I pray to God that he will aim for that renowned Nicaean discrimination and precision in his future writings about Christianity. For I earnestly hope that he will keep writing about the faith.

Sheridan’s impulse for a very broad Christianity may also explain why, when decrying the abuses done by “Christianity,” he confuses Christians with professing Christians. What Sheridan calls “bad Christian behaviour” is in fact precisely anti-Christian behaviour.

It perhaps also explains why he confuses faith – which is trusting what we reasonably know – with credulity, with believing in “what is certainly beyond that which can be proven.” And in an entire chapter addressed to Corinthian sexual immorality Sheridan does not – unlike Paul – address the proverbial elephant of homosexuality. To his credit he does put unorthodox “liberal Christianity” beyond the pale.

So, I couldn’t recommend this book to an unbeliever, or a new or unlearned Christian, who might conclude that these differences do not really matter, that joining a Catholic, mainline Protestant, or Pentecostal church would be equally good.

But I’ll gladly put it in the hands of knowledgeable Christians to inspire and encourage them.

There is much that is true and beautiful. When it comes to the imago dei “this mark of God’s beauty, this signature of God’s design and God’s delight, is present in every human being.” His examples of Roman Catholic service are inspiring and will challenge every Christian to work much harder to reach the poor and outcast. The church must be, as Sheridan describes, generous, wise, merciful, “a community of missionaries.”

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George Sand once wrote that a great journalist is “one of those men who synthesise, who create, day by day, the history of their time by connecting it to the past and to the future.” This concurs with Sheridan’s own conception of the journalist as one who does not merely report the facts, but who makes sense of them by shining upon them the searchlight of history and culture. He cites Malcolm Muggeridge, G.K. Chesterton, and C.S. Lewis as three of the twentieth-century’s greatest proponents of the craft, “superb journalists” who evaluated ideas “from first principles.”

Sheridan stands in this line. I have read his clear, knowledgeable, and often pungent articles on foreign affairs, defence, and culture for some thirty years. In How Christians Can Succeed Today he writes, like a true journalist-philosopher, with disarming humility and the charming simplicity which marks deep learning and thought. This book stands as some of his finest work. It is Miruvor; it will warm and invigorate you.

May Greg Sheridan write many more studies of Christian faith and life, and with ever-growing precision and discernment.

– Campbell Markham