ROUGH ROAD TO FREEDOM
A memoir
By Neil T. Anderson
Monarch Books. 264 pages. £9.99
ISBN 978 0 857 212 948
Neil Anderson is the founder of the ‘Freedom in Christ’ movement which seems to be gaining a considerable following in the UK.
This is a Christian counselling organisation which seems to have a method of meeting the spiritual and psychological problems Christians face and claims a high degree of success in its methods. You need to know this before tackling the book, as without this knowledge the book does not make much sense.
Fragmented
Written for an American audience, the jargon very quickly becomes annoying and the biography is rather fragmented in chronology. A great deal of understanding of the basic premise of Anderson’s theories is assumed and I suspect the book is really written for those who are already sold on his principles of counselling. He appears to make some good basic points about the need for Christians to be aware of the dark forces which surround them, but it is not made clear whether he is saying Christians can know demon possession. He also affirms the importance of knowing our privileges through being ‘in Christ’. But, again, I couldn’t tell from this book whether he is making a clear difference between our justification in Christ and our gradual sanctification so that we become, over our lifetime, more like Christ.
The book is full of anecdotes, as you might expect, but this leads to the conclusion that if you follow the basic steps of ‘Freedom in Christ’ then immediate release will be experienced. I personally can’t recommend the book as an uplifting read and would counsel approaching the method it espouses with caution.
