My Utmost: A Devotional Memoir Book Review

Post Author: The Rev. Ali Van Kuiken

Sometimes I feel out of place in my denomination. I’m an ordained Episcopal priest living on the East Coast in a liberal area, but I was raised Baptist in the Midwest, very much part of the evangelical fundamentalist subculture. Even though I’m an ordained clergywoman of another denomination, there is much I value about my childhood faith and upbringing. Thanks to AWANA (Approved Workmen Are Not Ashamed, a sort of Christian version of Boy and Girl Scouts), I have a very strong knowledge of Scripture. Due to memorizing Scripture as a kid and preaching and teaching at my church now, I have a sound understanding of the Bible. While knowing Scripture is useful professionally and meaningful personally,, I still find myself feeling out of place and at odds, both with others in my diocese and with my friends and family back home. Something is not quite aligned. Something is not fully integrated.

It turns out I am not alone in this tension. Macy Halford explores these themes in her 2017 book My Utmost: A Devotional Memoir. “How can my conservative grandmother and I love the same devotional book?” she asks. Raised in Dallas attending a megachurch and steeped in the same evangelical subculture I’ve named, Halford wrestles with her abiding love for much of that childhood even amidst a great shift in worldview that occurred when she attended Barnard College in New York City and later worked for The New Yorker. Her question prompts a deep dive into the author of her beloved devotional, My Utmost For His Highest. Intriguingly, she tells her own story alongside that of Utmost and its author, Oswald Chambers. Alongside reading about Halford’s various trips to Paris and what she is learning about Oswald’s life, we read about her teenage years. Alongside reading about her time at Wheaton in the Oswald Chambers archives, including his theological influences, we read about what her upbringing taught about being a “real” Christian. 

The storytelling underlying Halford’s quest lends some levity to otherwise weighty history and theological reflection. For instance, Halford relates how Utmost began to have an influence on her while telling the story of her role as a tree as a young teen in a local production of The Chronicles of Narnia. Young Halford goes to an after party with the boy who plays Peter and consistently calls the actors by their character names, eliciting from him the question of whether she knows that actors aren’t actually the people they portray on stage. 

I really enjoyed the historical exploration, because although I grew up with My Utmost For His Highest in my house, I had no idea that Oswald Chambers was Scottish, influenced by the Holiness tradition, or that he was himself a missionary, teacher, and that most times he was very hard to pin down theologically. Halford unearths a very complex and, by reports, saintly man, which in itself makes for a compelling and inspiring read. In addition, we get to take part in her attempt to reconcile two very disparate parts of herself, which also appear as two sides of a sharp divide in our current day: the devoted, religious side and the free-thinking, liberal side. Through detailed research, deep reflection, and absorbing storytelling, Halford helps us see that the two sides need not be irreconcilably dichotomous, but can actually be seen as a dialectic. Equally intriguing is the title which leaves unsettled whether the memoir is Halford’s own or whether that refers to her exposition of My Utmost for His Highest. In the end, perhaps distinctions blur and that which we read devotionally becomes inextricably part of our own stories. The memoir for either becomes for both.

One thing I felt was lacking was a more holistic picture of the United States from the 1850s through the present day. She makes passing reference to such things as the South’s response to reconstruction or integration, but she does not acknowledge that for many, many Americans the experience was one of slavery, oppression, and prejudice. Although trying to capture the nature of Oswald’s global vision, Halford missed out on an opportunity to bring that same vision to bear on her analysis and presentation of the United States during that time period.

Due to my own upbringing, I found this book personally compelling. However, even for others who were not steeped in the evangelical subculture as Halford and I were, her book has significance. It draws out questions that are relevant for each of us: how to bring opposing views into conversation with each other and how to approach another perspective when the divide is so impassable. Halford finally comes to an understanding informed by her understanding of Oswald and his wife Biddy’s project: the need to view the whole and the specific within the whole. We are not only members of groups like conservative, liberal, justice-oriented, Bible-believing. We are unique individuals, and fruitful conversation comes at that level, individual to individual. Halford, along with Chambers, invites us to remember this wisdom, not for the purpose of winning a debate but in order to gain a fuller picture of reality. It’s an insight that can help us, as Christians and as leaders, navigate our current world and its polarizations.