'Criminally Painful to Read': Critics Blast Russell Brand’s New Christian Self-Help Book

Actor and comedian Russell Brand has embroiled himself in yet another controversy.

Critics have slammed Brand's latest book, How to Become a Christian in Seven Days, which was launched on Tuesday, May 12.

The self-help book reportedly revolves around the subject of Christianity and faith with Brand also fleshing out anecdotes from his own life.

The actor-comedian adopted Christianity following allegations of sexual assault in 2023, which resulted in widespread public criticism.

Brand is scheduled to stand trial later this year to address allegations of assault and misdemeanor involving six women.

The 50-year-old, who was formerly a Buddhist, was baptized in River Thames with the help of his friend and adventurer Bear Grylls in April 2024.

However, while Brand intended the book to share his understanding of Christian principles, several critics have questioned the execution of his prose and the focus of the narrative.

How to Become a Christian in Seven Days was heavily criticized by The Telegraph’s Christopher Howse, who went with the headline, “Russell Brand’s disturbing memoir is an offence against G-d,” while reviewing the book.

Howse described the book as “criminally painful to read.”

The columnist wrote, “Reading Russell Brand’s How to Become a Christian in Seven Days is like being locked in an empty pub all night with a garrulous drunk. Except that Brand is now sober. His prose is the way he thinks, which is the frightening thing. It is criminally painful to read and it is not a victimless crime. The poor fool of a reader suffers, but the victim I feel most sorry for is G-d.”

The Forgetting Sarah Marshall actor’s prose was also slammed by The i Paper’s Emily Bootle, who took a dig at Brand for writing too much about himself even as Christianity does not permit "selfishness."

Bootle stated that Brand “uses rambling biblical metaphors and Christian ideology as a vessel for unfinished Notes-app thoughts, crackpot conspiracy theories -- and mainly for talking about himself, despite many protestations that Christ has finally freed him from the cult of selfishness and individualism to which the rest of us are still enslaved.”

She added that the sole validating aspect of Brand’s book are the parts where he shared some personal anecdotes from his life like the death of his dog and his son’s heart surgery.

She said that How to Become a Christian in Seven Days is “a fountain of alt-right ideology, an embarrassing display of hubris (save for a couple of anecdotes where he shows rare, human vulnerability: his son’s heart surgery and the death of his dog) and a manipulation of respectable Christian values for personal gain.”

In his review for The Times, John Maier took a jibe at Brand by stating that the latter seemed to have swallowed a dictionary.

Maier stated, “Brand has swallowed a dictionary, and it is not coming out again via his mouth.”

While his new book has largely received negative reviews, Brand’s recent promotional appearance at Piers Morgan’s talk show Uncensored was labeled “embarrassing” by viewers after the actor-comedian failed to locate a passage in the Bible which he claimed to have read during his court trials.