Book Review: A Long Obedience in the Same Direction by Eugene Peterson
A Long Obedience in the Same Direction: Discipleship in an Instant Society (Commemorative Edition) by Eugene Peterson. Intervarsity Press, 2024.
“Spiritual formation.” “discipleship.” “Christian living.” One can walk into a Christian bookstore and find plenty of glossy covers promising secrets to growth in forty days, seven steps, three keys, or one weird trick Paul forgot to mention. It’s overwhelming to the average Christian trying to sort out sound, solid, and helpful resources (let alone what any of these slogans even mean). Some are theologically thin, others are self-help with a Jesus sticker slapped on top, and more than a few are simply expensive ways to state the obvious.
Sponsored
Sometimes, though, the best path is to return to the “tried and true.”
Eugene Peterson’s A Long Obedience in the Same Direction is a crown jewel of the discipleship genre and has weathered years of changes in the American church. Now reissued by IVP in a handsome commemorative edition, it deserves its status as a true classic. Decades after its publishing, it is even more urgent for our culture saturated in instant gratification, social media, and misinformation. Peterson’s writing is pastoral, accessible, refreshing, and challenging, blending depth with practicality.
A Journey of Ascent
Peterson structures A Long Obedience around the Psalms of Ascent (Psalms 120-134), developing a theme from each of them through exposition and practical application (repentance, worship, service, obedience, joy, etc.). There is a thread of continuity as the chapters build a cohesive journey. As the Israelites sang the songs of ascent on their journey to the earthly Jerusalem, so we, as disciples of the Lord Jesus, journey toward the heavenly city. This framework of the journey, accompanied by the songs of God’s people raising their praises, petitions, and laments, enforces Peterson’s central message about being disciples of Jesus:
- It is a long obedience: A commitment that shapes our hearts, minds, and actions from the day we start following Jesus to the end.
- It is obedience: Peterson doesn’t pull punches about the reality of the Christian life. True faith is more than intellectual belief or private convictions—it is a prayerful and demanding way of living, but never burdensome. The stakes of disobedience are high; we have enemies eager to pounce on our weaknesses. The purpose of the Christian journey is conformity to the image of Jesus, individually and collectively. And that means taking up our cross daily and dying to ourselves.
- It is a long obedience in the same direction: The journey to the heavenly city is a steady ascent. Not a wandering in the wilderness, nor a peril-fraught high-speed chase, nor a lackadaisical frolicking. Steady. Deliberate. Always moving forward and upward.
In the afterword of the commemorative edition, Peterson lays out his position:
My pastoral work was to fuse [prayer and Scripture] into a single act. […] It is this fusion of God speaking to us (Scripture) and our speaking to Him (prayer) that the Holy Spirit uses to form Christ in us. And it is this fusion that I was trying to get onto the pages of A Long Obedience.
In theological terms, Peterson focuses on our sanctification—the lifelong process of being shaped into the image of Christ through the means of grace God has given us for our benefit.
Rooted in Community & Steadfastness
A recurring idea throughout Peterson’s work is that we should take up no spiritual discipline or prayer posture in isolation. The way of Christ demands a covenant community of saintly sinners and sinful saints. It is difficult (if not impossible) to grow deeper in service, worship, and humility when you are not in a community that exhorts you to do just that. In our individualistic age, Peterson’s words ring urgently:
Scripture knows nothing of the solitary Christian. People of faith are always members of a community. […] God never works with individuals in isolation, but always with people in community.
And yet, somewhat prophetically, Peterson also speaks out against turning a community into an institution that views its members as problems to solve or tools to make more efficient.
A Refusal to Chase Trends
What stands out about Peterson’s work is its refusal to chase trends. In contrast to other spiritual formation books—each with its own idea to “fix” the Christian life or positioning itself as revolutionary—Peterson insists on the fundamentals of the Christian life: Scripture, prayer, community, and following the examples of those who have gone before us. Many books in the spiritual formation and discipleship genres commit one of two errors, neither of which is new:
- Stripping the supernatural dimension of the Christian life, reducing Christianity to a way of living or ethical and social concerns;
- On the opposite end, going so far into the mystical side that subjective experience overrides Scripture.
This is a problem that persists in modern Christianity—see the divided response to John Mark Comer and Dallas Willard. These issues are a significant reason finding sound books on discipleship and spiritual formation can feel like navigating a minefield. Discernment is crucial. A Long Obedience calls us back to a life anchored in Scripture and prayer, lived in community and led by the Holy Spirit. Peterson, even with the challenges and corrections he offers, remains pastoral and steadfast—optimistic, even—that the fusion of prayer and Scripture is still the surest way to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18) and “go on to maturity” (Hebrews 6:1).
The Common Means of Grace
Dating from 1980, Peterson’s work has some age on it. However, it still receives nearly universal acclaim. Peterson, like C.S. Lewis, has become beloved by Christians of all stripes. A Long Obedience has resisted fads in the church since its release. While the book is clearly intended for an evangelical audience, there is still plenty that we as Anglicans can learn from it.
First, Peterson’s emphasis on the communal nature of the Christian life is a welcome counterpoint to the individualism of many churches today. Peterson indirectly alludes to the “cloud of witnesses” (Hebrews 11) and the communion of saints several times throughout the work. The Psalms of Ascent themselves reflect a communal pilgrimage—a reminder that God’s people are knit together across time, distance, language, and custom. He writes of the joy and security found in community; of others lifting up those in hardship or doubt; and of the beauty when God’s people celebrate his faithfulness together.
Second, Peterson insists on spiritual growth through the ordinary means of grace, especially Scripture and prayer. But our fast-paced society puts multiple stumbling blocks in the way, as Peterson notes: “There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations of Christians called holiness.”
From the Anglican perspective, though, Peterson omits a critical component of living in the narrow way: The lived rhythms of public and private liturgies through the Book of Common Prayer and, more importantly, the grace we receive in partaking of the Lord’s Supper. Those rooted in the rhythms of the church year, the Daily Office, and a sacramental life know that our liturgy shapes our prayer life, and our prayer life shapes our liturgy. (Lex orandi, lex credendi) While Peterson emphasizes the communal nature of faith, we as Anglicans would add that the act of sharing in the Lord’s Supper is the most communal it gets in the Christian life, a mystery by which we are joined to Christ, the Church, and the entire cloud of witnesses in a foretaste of the heavenly banquet.
The Church Collective
This is likely the most significant shortcoming in Peterson’s work, at least from the Anglican perspective. For all its emphasis on the importance of community in discipleship, Peterson stops short of articulating the bigger picture of how discipleship unfolds within the body of the Church and through the means of grace that the Lord lavishes upon us to conform us to the image of Jesus. Put another way, while Peterson emphasizes community, his point is that discipleship remains an individual matter that happens within that community.
While undoubtedly true, the body of Christ is instrumental not only as the context for growth in grace but also as an active participant in it. Most evangelical and Reformed-learning Anglicans (like myself) won’t take much issue with Peterson’s stance (even if we think it’s missing something). Still, Anglo-Catholic brethren will probably be squeamish at Peterson’s silence on the role of the collective Church in shaping disciples. This was a caveat that I picked up on relatively early in the book, but it is a minor drawback in an otherwise excellent work.
A Long Obedience still speaks wisdom to the Church today, decades after its publishing and several years after Peterson’s passing into glory. Its focus is on the steady, ongoing journey, in community with God’s people and rooted in prayer and in God’s self-revelation in scripture. The great triumph of a work like A Long Obedience is that it does not even pretend to innovate or hold up some “shiny new thing”—only to recover and return to the old ways: “Thus says the Lord: ‘Stand by the roads, and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way is; and walk in it, and find rest for your souls’” (Jeremiah 6:16).
Book Review: A Walk Through the Prayer Book
Klukas, Arnold W. A Walk Through the Prayer Book: The 2019 Book of Common Prayer Explained. Anglican House, 2023. 118 pp. As the Anglican Church in North America celebrates its fifteenth year, its 2019 edition of the Book of Common Prayer likewise celebrates five years of use. Fittingly, Anglican House Publishers has released a helpful…
A Long Obedience In A Lenten Direction
A week before Ash Wednesday this year, I was preaching at a Christian high school to students who were learning about the season of Lent. I find excitement in sharing the basics of spiritual seasons like Lent with people who are learning about the Christian calendar for the first time. Lenten Basics As I teach…
