Welsh Journals

Geraint Tudur Bangor Harri Parri, Tom Nefyn: Portread (Caernarfon: Pantycelyn Press, 1999), ISBN 1-874786-89-5, pp. 135 illustrated. £ 7.00. (A Welsh language publication) Perhaps the most notorious controversy to emerge in twentieth century Welsh Church history is the excommunication for heresy of the Revd Tom Nefyn Williams from the Calvinistic Methodist Connexion in 1927. For a time, the unlikely setting of Tumble, Carmarthenshire, became the focus of religious interest and theological debate. To some, Williams's experimental approach to worship, activity on behalf of his impoverished congregation and heterodox theological views all contained a prophetic edge which challenged an establishment and an orthodoxy out of touch with people's needs and out of tune with modern discoveries and thought. To others he was an irresponsible hothead who forced the denomination's hand by insisting on publishing an outline of a half-baked theology which contained nothing that was particularly novel. With a propensity for instability, perhaps excusable in one who had witnessed the horrors of war in the Dardanelles and the Middle East, he vascillated when the opportunity arose to take his ideas to their reasonable conclusion. Rather than pastor those who had followed him, he retreated to north Wales and eventually returned to the Methodist fold. Williams was and remains an enigma. He poses more questions than answers, and opinion will always be divided as to his place in Welsh history. This book gives much space to the events in 1920s Tumble, setting this in the wider context of Williams's life, including his popular ministry exercised in the years after his return to Methodism. It is written more in reminiscence than in analysis, sympathetically rather than critically, and in an easy, conversational style. Complemented by a wide selection of photographs, it succeeds in offering a picture of the man, pastor and evangelist, and the period it covers. It offers no explanations for Williams's behaviour and no assessment of the Tumble incident. For those who know little about Tom Nefyn, this book will fill the void. Those seeking answers to questions will be left still wondering. This is an example of a ministerial biography ('cofiant'), a genre which at one time was a popular way of recording the lives of Nonconformist ministers who exercised popular and influential local ministries. As such, a biography