Everything is Spiritual

June 29, 2020
Former evangelical Christian pastor Bell (Love Wins) persuasively preaches a gospel of embracing one’s story in this enjoyable mix of memoir and sermon. Bell was a star in the evangelical Christian firmament until he left his Michigan megachurch (a term, he notes, that made him wince) and challenged conservative Christians with his 2011 book, Love Wins, which argued all people will be saved. Bell anchors his musings in family history (particularly the deaths of an uncle and great-grandfather he never met who he’s felt have “been present in life since the beginning”) to establish his premise that “everything is connected to everything else.” He traces his spiritual journey through college and seminary and details formative events that led him from being an assistant pastor to founding Mars Hill Church, where he established a national reputation. Throughout, Bell encourages readers to embrace change, and his reflections on his time as a pastor are both grounded and imaginative, and make more sense than some of his meanderings into such areas as particle physics. Bell’s vigorous, quirky outing will appeal to progressive Christians.

August 1, 2020
A former megachurch pastor's stab at sagacity. In his latest, Christian speaker and writer Bell, the founder of Mars Hill Bible Church, offers a hybrid work of autobiography and exploration of "big ideas." The author sets himself up as something of a mystic; indeed, he fondly recounts how a woman in his congregation "pulled me aside and said, "'You're a mystic.' " As he writes, "the mystic doesn't need an authority figure to validate what they know is true. I was never interested in religion....I was after an experience." Bell makes it clear that through much of his career, he has strained against, or simply ignored, the authority of church traditions, denominationalism, and established theology. In this brief work, he attempts to distill lessons from his own life and from his grappling with questions of faith and existence, all in a nearly stream-of-consciousness, poetic format. Unfortunately, the author's halting, fragmented style makes the text difficult to read, and his conclusions are hardly groundbreaking. Among his insights: "We're made of thingness, / we have life, / we have minds, / and we also have / soul. / And soul is real, / just as real as your skin and bones. / The mind thinks, / the soul knows." As a memoir, the narrative is scattershot and saturated with Bell's feelings of loss, confusion, and anxiety. Throughout, the author is unsure about his next steps despite his massive successes in ministry, books (Love Wins, What Is the Bible? etc.), and public speaking. Dipping his toe into quantum physics, Bell sees in the Big Bang and the structure of molecules deep life lessons about belonging and growing. Yet even these ideas don't convey smoothly, as the author unnecessarily camouflages them within a garden of chopped-up phrases. The voice of one crying in the wilderness. Bell could have done better.

COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

September 1, 2020
In his new book, Bell, the best-selling author of Love Wins (2011), podcaster, and spiritual teacher, considers not only making personal connections but also finding connections through the centuries. He is an expert at identifying and making sense of paradoxes, whether referencing the continuity of generations or the fragility of maintaining relationships. We come from somewhere, he writes. We come from somebody. Particular words ring out here, such as randomness and uncertainty. Although there are dark moments, what interests Bell is what can emerge from the darkness and how we can find our own version of transcendence. Presented as one long, nonlinear piece, there are no chapters; his narrative covers seminal moments in his life, from contracting viral meningitis to watching the Australian rock band Midnight Oil, transfixed by the charismatic front man, Peter Garrett, and the absolute joy he expresses as he sings about social justice. Bell looks at the world, at the universe, with both childlike wonder and insatiable curiosity. A lovely, poetic meditation on what brings us together.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)