Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul

Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul: Celtic Wisdom for Reawakening to What Our Souls Know and Healing the World
J. Philip Newell
HarperOne (July 6, 2021), 285 pages
Kindle edition $13.99, Amazon hardcover $21.28

I can’t think of anyone better qualified to write about Celtic spirituality than J. Philip Newell. He was, after all, once the director of the retreat center on Iona, and continued (in pre-pandemic times at least) to lead pilgrimages there. Newell does an impressive job of discussing several individuals who were instrumental in furthering the cause of Celtic Christianity.

The author begins his survey with Pelagius, who was a contemporary of St. Augustine. Pelagius believed that human nature was not inherently sinful. He also believed in teaching women. For this and other (in the church’s eyes) heresies, the Roman church condemned him more than once. Newell then discusses St. Brigid. Brigid, of course, has pagan routes. Once source said that she was a Druidess. The Celtic Church, however, heartily embraced her.

Newell goes on to discuss John Scotus Eriugena, who lived in the ninth century. Eriugena saw the sacred in all the natural world. The author then gives a treatment of the life of Alexander John Scott, a Scottish minister of the nineteenth century. Scott’s teachings got him into trouble and very little of his writing has come down to us. Newell, however, believed that Scott’s teachings were important and chose to write his doctoral dissertation about him. While his advisers were dubious Newell was able to resurrect enough source material from contemporary sources to resurrect his legacy.

The author discusses both John Muir and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Muir, the son of a Calvinist preacher, had a spiritual side we rarely hear about. Teilhard believed the divine existed in the material. I had often seen him referred to as a paleontologist, but Newell states that the church sent him into the field because of his writing. (Other sources, perhaps closer to Teilhard, say his paleontological work influenced his thought.) The Catholic Church banned his writing, but he signed all of his books over to his literary assistant who was able to publish them after his death. Newell also writes about George MacLeod, who was responsible for the modern incarnation of Iona as a retreat center. Clearly Newell has a great fondness for MacLeod. Finally, Newell devotes a chapter to the poet Kenneth White, who had a Celtic mentality and wrote poems about the sacred journey.

Newell devotes a chapter to the Carmina Gadelica, a collection of Celtic poems and songs. A man named Alexander Carmichael, who lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, gets credit for compiling many of these. These pieces were originally written in Gaelic, and Newell writes that the Gaelic spoken in the Hebrides Islands of Scotland is related to Sanskrit. He says that one can find in these works the same sense of the sacred found in Sanskrit poetry.

Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul is an excellent introduction to or review of Celtic Christianity.