"Surprised by Oxford" by Carolyn Weber

After reading Tim Challies review of "Surprised by Oxford," I was pleased to discover it offered by the BookSneeze program of Thomas Nelson Publishers.

Then it came, and it was a hefty 455 pages and chock full of quotes from Homer and Burns and Milton and Yeats...and I thought...wow, this is a bit too intellectual for me.

So I put it off and put it off.

But between Christmas and New Year's I picked it up again ... and I was pleasantly surprised.

Yes, Carolyn Weber has been a Romantic Literature Professor.  She has read things I will likely never, ever read.

(Though, when I was a young mother of only one child, I would peruse the library shelves for classic such as Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, Death Comes to the Archbishop, and other such titles.  It was easy to spot them because they were part of a collection, so I just started at the A authors and proceeded along through the alphabet...okay, part way through the alphabet.  As a homeschool mom of four, I now spend more time reading Dr. Seuss and Henry and Mudge. [grin]  Thanks to having a high school student, I've been more recently able to indulge in Ivanhoe, The Scarlet Letter, Scottish Chiefs, and others.  Needless to say, my interest in more substantial reading has been piqued again.)

"Surprised by Oxford" is, well, a surprising story of coming to Christ.  Perhaps for some it would not be surprising.  For someone raised in the faith, someone in the group Carolyn says should not take their heritage for granted, I was ignorant (shamefully so) of the intellectual struggle that making a decision for Christ could be.

Her journey is enlightening to someone who never really had a struggle, never really had all those questions.  This is surely what makes her faith so strong, and what can very likely result in the faith of one raised in the church so weak.  It would do us all well to struggle, to contemplate, to wrestle.  She is encouraged and challenged by other intellectuals in her circle to go deep, something we all would be wise to do.

This book is a great read for those raised in the church (to help us understand what goes through the mind of those who don't come as easily to the decision as perhaps we did), to those who struggled before surrendering to the Good News (as an encouragement and reinforcement of the decision), and to those still exploring Christianity (as a clarification of so many issues...and non-issues).


My thanks to Thomas Nelson Publishers for a copy of this book to review.