Christianity believes in a fallen world, where God’s kingdom is still coming.
Romanticism believes in an ideal world, however threatened by man’s industry.
Christianity believes in the incarnation of God in man.
Romanticism believes in the incarnation of God in nature.
Christianity identifies the Holy Spirit as the source of spiritual truth.
Romanticism believes in the imagination as the source of spiritual truth.
Perhaps these are over-generalizations. Christianity and Romanticism resist definitions, but they are surely not the same. That is why I am alarmed for John Philip Newell when he “gave my ordination back” for a better setting to experience “the presence of the divine in all things.” He paraphrased his journey as leaving the “temple” for the “wilderness.”
To me, that sounds like the move from Christianity to Romanticism. Perhaps Newell would not describe it that way.
Newell described his spiritual journey on December 4 on a Zoom interview on “The Cottage,” Diana Bass Butler’s Substack platform. His talk was based on his new book: The Great Search: Turning to Earth and Soul in the Quest for Healing and Home (HarperOne, 2024).
Wordsworth’s rendition of the Romantic ethos sounds like the life Newell has chosen for himself.
These lines, especially the final three lines, remind me of J. Philip Newell. That is not so much heretical as it is divergent from the path of a priest of Christianity. In spite of all this:
- I agree with Newell’s assertion that we should love God and every species as yourself.
- I agree with his mentor and “geologician” Thomas Berry, when he says “God has been domesticated to serve us.”
- I am an admirer of Newell. I have lived on his devotional books, Celtic Treasures and Celtic Prayers from Iona.
- However, my reverence for nature has been limited to the birds and the deer in our backyard.
- Besides, I haven’t read his book.
With all these disqualifications, my comments could be taken with a grain of salt. I will make them anyway. How does Newell’s journey differ from the Romantic poet who worshipped nature without reference to God? How does his worship of God in the Creation account for the incarnation of God in the community of human beings? How does his quest serve the needs of the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick in Matthew 25? Possibly this question is answered in his book. Mea culpa.
The withdrawal into the wilderness suggests the path of John the Baptist. He managed to attract the curious and baptized many of them. Is this what Newell plans to do? I do not hear that in his discovering “the mystique of earth.”
Jesus admired John, but he chose a life in the throng of needy people. “The Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life for a ransom for many”(Mark 10:45). St. Francis retreated to the wilderness, but with a vow of poverty and dedication to the needs of the poor. The wilderness is never an end in itself in the Christian life.
On Day Three in the “Power and Justice” chapter of Celtic Treasure J. Philip Newell offers this prayer:
Lover of the poor,
defender of the needy,
sanctuary of the rejected. . .
We seek for them, O God, the gifts that are dear to us:
food for the table,.
drink for the soul,
shelter in the night,
and open arms to welcome us. ( p. 23)
This sounds like the former J. Philip Newell, the one who stood at the door to the temple, the one who invited every needy person to the feast.
May his temple of the wilderness continue to serve this “sanctuary of the rejected.”