The Great Search:

The Book We Need Today

by CSW Director Rob Field

John Philip Newell’s The Great Search is a book we need today, and Newell is a prophetic, gentle-voiced teacher we very much need to hear. Upon further reflection, “a book” is not the right phrase. Rather, I want to say The Great Search is the book for spiritually-minded people seeking wisdom and inspiration today.

The Great Search is in keeping with Newell’s 2021 book, Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul. If you know and appreciate that book, you will want to read (and I predict you will love) the new one. And if you’ve never read anything by John Philip Newell, this is an excellent point of entry. The Great Search is a clear call to move forward with our spiritual evolution and maturity — whether we consider ourselves “religious,” “spiritual,” or “spiritual but not religious.” I found it to be moving, thought-provoking, inspiring, and beautifully written.

Newell writes, “We are in a time of transition, not only religiously but politically and ecologically. What is the spiritual vision at the heart of our religious inheritance that we have forgotten or neglected? The Spirit is urging us to remember that we are to do to others, including Earth and every species, what we would most want done unto ourselves. This is the teaching of Jesus at the heart of our Christian inheritance, with its equivalent in the Golden Rule of nearly every great spiritual tradition in the world. And this is the teaching that will guide us into new beginnings.”

Newell organizes the book around a diverse group of nine visionary voices, and he explains the gifts of wisdom they offer in our time of transition and turmoil. The author refers to these nine visionaries as “messengers”:

• Thomas Berry — a “messenger of vision” (ecologically-focused writer, American Roman Catholic)
• Nan Shepard — a “messenger of oneness with Earth” (Earth-loving poet, Scottish Christian)
• Martin Buber — a “messenger of presence” (iconoclastic philosopher, Austrian-born Jew)
• Carl Jung — a “messenger of awareness” (founder of analytical psychology, Swiss universalist)
• Julian of Norwich — a “messenger of wellness” (mystic-visionary, Medieval English Christian)
• Jalaluddin Rumi — a “messenger of love” (ecstatic poet, Medieval Persian Sufi)
• Rabindranath Tagore — a “messenger of wisdom” (poet-philosopher of India, Hindu-Sikh)
• Etty Hillesum — a “messenger of meaning” (Dutch mystical writer, Jewish Holocaust victim)
• Edwin Muir — a “messenger of faith” (visionary poet, Scottish agnostic-turned-Christian)

Newell makes a strong case that we must turn to messengers like these nine. In the book, he describes how they can awaken us to the urgent priority of learning how to love Earth, fellow humans, and all beings more deeply. Like Fr. Richard Rohr, Newell believes the wisdom we seek can be found most readily at the margin of the world’s enduring religious traditions. Although I was already familiar with most of these 9 visionaries, Newell taught me something fresh and spiritually significant about each of them. The Great Search is a book I will be returning to in the coming weeks to savor its many insights.

Once an ordained Church of Scotland minister, Newell quietly renounced his clergy vows in 2020, despairing of the Christian Church’s seeming inability to move beyond exclusivist truth claims. As with other universal-minded teachers, Newell believes the institutional Church erred in teaching that Jesus of Nazareth is a unique depository of divinity, set apart from the rest of humanity and superior to the world’s other religious founders. By contrast, Newell understands the intended message of the Christian heritage to be that Jesus is a revealer of the divine, loving presence — a presence available to all and present within Earth and all beings. This stance, however, does not make Newell a harsh critic of institutional Christianity, which he honors as an ongoing spiritual home for some of his readers. He continues to call himself “a grateful son of the Christian household.”

I find The Great Search most compelling whenever the author moves from broad, universal insights to specific aspects of these nine visionaries’ life and teachings, as well as anecdotes from Newell’s own life. In chapter 5, he shares how his eldest son suffered a major mental breakdown as a teenager. “It was a staggering time of uncertainty and doubt,” says Newell — for his child and his entire family. Thankfully, Newell’s son gradually found healing, described movingly in beautiful prose. Even more powerfully, Newell ties this personal story to the vision that came to Julian of Norwich in 14th century England. When Lady Julian was nearly at the point of death, she received a vision of Jesus who revealed to her (among other things), “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” Every chapter of the book includes insights like this.

In his introduction, Newell makes clear his intentions for The Great Search: it is about nurturing the “seeds of hope” shared by these nine visionaries. “Whether it is a Christian diaspora that we feel most immediately part of, or a Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist diaspora, at the end of the day, and at the deepest of levels, it is a human diaspora that we are part of. For it is humanity that is scattered and needs to be gathered back into true relationship with the spiritual depths of Earth and every human being again. This ultimately is what we are seeking, our true reconnection with Earth and one another.”

Reading Newell’s new book makes this hope tangible, and helps me feel as if it might yet be within my reach. Not simply a book for our times, I believe The Great Search is the book for spiritual seekers today.