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Conversion: A Spiritual Journey
Book by Muggeridge, Malcolm
160 pages, Paperback
First published March 24, 1988
8 people are currently reading
230 people want to read
About the author
Malcolm Muggeridge
104 books287 followersThomas Malcolm Muggeridge was an English journalist, author, media personality, and satirist. During World War II, he was a soldier and a spy. In the aftermath of the war, as a hugely influential London journalist, he converted to Christianity and helped bring Mother Teresa to popular attention in the West. He was also a critic of the sexual revolution and of drug use.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 26, 2019
Muggeridge was, to my mind, quintessentially British. In other words, he was kind of an odd duck. So, it was unsurprising that this autobiography of his spiritual journey, would be unusual. He writes in the third person with quick interjections of first person comments almost confidentially directed at the reader.
If someone were looking for a comprehensive autobiography, I wouldn't recommend this book. It is quite short and filled with quotes by others. And yet, there is an intimate clarity that one usually finds with poetry, I think. I enjoyed it very much.
If someone were looking for a comprehensive autobiography, I wouldn't recommend this book. It is quite short and filled with quotes by others. And yet, there is an intimate clarity that one usually finds with poetry, I think. I enjoyed it very much.
November 13, 2020
An excellent book from Muggeridge. I have read one book, several articles and essays from Muggeridge, this is the second book and I found it extremely informative at times. Muggeridge covers his religious life from youth through his joining the Catholic Church in 1982. I highlighted numerous passages along with notes scattered throughout. Highly recommended...SLT
May 9, 2022
A little disappointing.
I heard about Muggeridge from my good friend Rimas about ten years ago, but finally got around to him now. I have to say, I found some of his arguments haven't aged well. And this book probably doesn't give the fairest representation of them because it's quite short and sporadic since he wrote it near the end of his life.
There were times where it seemed like he was more into being conservative than Christian. For example, lots of scorn for the Soviet system and none for the Nazis. I mean maybe he felt like it was too obvious, but I thought the omission was glaring. I'm also not anti Christendom, but I think he way over does it. In my humble opinion, Christendom caused just as many problems as it solved. It's just a system. Every system will have its flaws. And while I'm no revolutionary, I think he borders on holding onto something just because it's been there rather than because it's good.
There were also a couple of anti-body comments that I thought were problematic theologically.
Overall, he's a very interesting person whose life spans the twentieth century. But he had some serious problems in his life that he didn't resolve for a long time. I mean he just goes off and leaves his family on his jobs multiple times and once almost killed himself after drinking too much on one of those jobs. At least he's honest that he's no saint, but how long it took him to finally give himself over to God was sort of frustrating to read.
Apparently, he gets compared to Chesterton. Well, that just didn't pan out for me. It's probably unfair to try to live up to Chesterton.
I heard about Muggeridge from my good friend Rimas about ten years ago, but finally got around to him now. I have to say, I found some of his arguments haven't aged well. And this book probably doesn't give the fairest representation of them because it's quite short and sporadic since he wrote it near the end of his life.
There were times where it seemed like he was more into being conservative than Christian. For example, lots of scorn for the Soviet system and none for the Nazis. I mean maybe he felt like it was too obvious, but I thought the omission was glaring. I'm also not anti Christendom, but I think he way over does it. In my humble opinion, Christendom caused just as many problems as it solved. It's just a system. Every system will have its flaws. And while I'm no revolutionary, I think he borders on holding onto something just because it's been there rather than because it's good.
There were also a couple of anti-body comments that I thought were problematic theologically.
Overall, he's a very interesting person whose life spans the twentieth century. But he had some serious problems in his life that he didn't resolve for a long time. I mean he just goes off and leaves his family on his jobs multiple times and once almost killed himself after drinking too much on one of those jobs. At least he's honest that he's no saint, but how long it took him to finally give himself over to God was sort of frustrating to read.
Apparently, he gets compared to Chesterton. Well, that just didn't pan out for me. It's probably unfair to try to live up to Chesterton.
October 28, 2017
Alas, for a book that (at least according to the title) purports to be about conversion, this book sadly is much more an autobiography than a spiritual journey. Though, as an autobiography, it is unsteady, a bit over-salted with quotes from others, and oddly written in the third person, varying temporally by the author's stage of life; e.g. "The Student," "The Journalist". Given the author's status, for most of his life, as a "vociferous unbeliever" (as per the back cover) I expected more analysis, more understanding, more journey here.
Disappointing, and feels a bit dated at points -- some references sail well over my Millennial head unless I look them up.
That said, the chapters on his time in pre-WW2 USSR and Ukraine are fascinating, given that his -- at-the-time -- contrarian opinion now is the dominant opinion and the "Liberals" he derides as blindly infatuated with Stalin are now seen as just that.
Disappointing, and feels a bit dated at points -- some references sail well over my Millennial head unless I look them up.
That said, the chapters on his time in pre-WW2 USSR and Ukraine are fascinating, given that his -- at-the-time -- contrarian opinion now is the dominant opinion and the "Liberals" he derides as blindly infatuated with Stalin are now seen as just that.
January 10, 2020
Good book, and well written. He gives a fairly high level flyover of his 80+ year life and you can tell he has seen many major events and major ideas come and go. He's very poetic and philosophical about how he describes the events in his life and his eventual growing towards God. I'm not very familiar with Muggeridge in general, but plan to read some more of his writing to get a feel for the man.
May 30, 2017
There were some spots related to specifics in the USSR that were tough to get through, but when Mr. Muggeridge returned to the meat of his conversion story, I was all-in. Many good quotes and little nuggets to extract.
January 18, 2020
Tough to read due to the writing style, but very thought-provoking and perceptive in many places. It’s a whirlwind tour through his spiritual journey.
March 16, 2017
Interesting
January 2, 2014
An odd autobiography--written mostly in the third person. I suppose that is OK, because Muggeridge was an odd man.
I read Something Beautiful for God and wanted to find out how Muggeridge solved the problems he posed in that book when he converted to Catholicism later in life.
"The Church, after all, is an institution with a history; a past and a future. It went on crusades, it set up an inquisition, it installed scandalous popes and countenanced monstrous iniquities. Institutionally speaking, these are perfectly comprehensible, and even, in earthly terms, excusable. In the mouthpiece of God on earth, belonging, not just to history, but to everlasting truth, they are not to be defended. At least, not by me."
"Today, there is the additional circumstance that the Church, for inscrutable reasons of its own, has decided to have a reformation just when the previous one--Luther's--is finally running into the sand. I make no judgment about something which, as a non-member, is no concern of mine; but if I were a member, then I should be forced to say that, in my opinion, if men were to be stationed at the doors of churches with whips to drive worshipers away, or inside the religious orders specifically to discourage vocations, or among the clergy to spread alarm and despondency, they could not hope to be as effective in achieving these ends as are trends and policies seemingly now dominant within the Church. Feeling so, it would be preposterous to seek admission, more particularly as, if the ecumenical course is fully run, luminaries of the Church to which I nominally belong, like the former Bishop of Woolwich, for whom--putting it mildly--I have little regard, will in due course take their place in the Roman Catholic hierarchy among the heirs of St. Peter."
He didn't really solve any of these problems. He seems to have decided to take what is good in Catholicism, especially the sacrament of Communion, and leave his complaints aside.
I find this prayer from the Foreword very moving and apt:
God, humble my pride,
extinguish the last stirrings of my ego,
obliterate whatever remains of worldly ambition and carnality,
and in these last days of my mortal existence,
help me to serve only Thy purposes,
to speak and to write only Thy words,
to think only Thy thoughts,
to have no other prayer than "Thy will be done."
I read Something Beautiful for God and wanted to find out how Muggeridge solved the problems he posed in that book when he converted to Catholicism later in life.
"The Church, after all, is an institution with a history; a past and a future. It went on crusades, it set up an inquisition, it installed scandalous popes and countenanced monstrous iniquities. Institutionally speaking, these are perfectly comprehensible, and even, in earthly terms, excusable. In the mouthpiece of God on earth, belonging, not just to history, but to everlasting truth, they are not to be defended. At least, not by me."
"Today, there is the additional circumstance that the Church, for inscrutable reasons of its own, has decided to have a reformation just when the previous one--Luther's--is finally running into the sand. I make no judgment about something which, as a non-member, is no concern of mine; but if I were a member, then I should be forced to say that, in my opinion, if men were to be stationed at the doors of churches with whips to drive worshipers away, or inside the religious orders specifically to discourage vocations, or among the clergy to spread alarm and despondency, they could not hope to be as effective in achieving these ends as are trends and policies seemingly now dominant within the Church. Feeling so, it would be preposterous to seek admission, more particularly as, if the ecumenical course is fully run, luminaries of the Church to which I nominally belong, like the former Bishop of Woolwich, for whom--putting it mildly--I have little regard, will in due course take their place in the Roman Catholic hierarchy among the heirs of St. Peter."
He didn't really solve any of these problems. He seems to have decided to take what is good in Catholicism, especially the sacrament of Communion, and leave his complaints aside.
I find this prayer from the Foreword very moving and apt:
God, humble my pride,
extinguish the last stirrings of my ego,
obliterate whatever remains of worldly ambition and carnality,
and in these last days of my mortal existence,
help me to serve only Thy purposes,
to speak and to write only Thy words,
to think only Thy thoughts,
to have no other prayer than "Thy will be done."
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews