Peter Costello
Doing Christianity: How religion is about what you do, not what you believe
by Paul Higginson (Columba Books, €12.99 / £10.99)
As a book for Eastertide, or indeed any time of the year, Paul Higginson’s book is much more interesting. It seems to me to derive more certainly from the precepts and actions of Jesus in the Gospels than many of the later ecclesiastical interpretations.
The Beatitudes, the parables and the passing observations of Jesus (“He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword…”), these all speak clearly and simply enough to later readers.
This book comes as a refreshing breeze on a hot day, and will come as such to many to whom religious and scholarly controversy seems arid and beside the point. This indeed is not my view alone: it is also the view of Peter Keenan who is quoted on the cover that: “This book will change the way you think about the gospel of Jesus.” It will indeed; but in a more effective way than Keenan’s own books.
Higginson puts forward nine simple steps, by which people can explore the nature of being a Christian in the modern age. The brief account of his own life pattern explains a lot about this book. Paul Higginson taught religious education and politics for over 35 years, becoming assistant principal in St Dominic’s Sixth Form College in Harrow, near London. But before all those years in teaching he worked in a half way house for people with bi-polar conditions. Later he also spent time working with St Mother Teresa’s nuns out in India.
He is now involved in the Catholic School inspectorate and active in charity funding rising.
One can see here just how rooted in his own daily life the ideas in this book really are. It might be said that he practises what he preaches, except that it is not preaching but teaching which his forte.