Everything Is Spiritual: Finding Your Way in a Turbulent World

by Rob Bell

Overview

"An exciting vision of the future" —Michael Eric Dyson

Rob Bell's Everything Is Spiritual is an unexpected and compelling invitation to see your life in a whole new way.

We have the great moments of our lives, the highs, those times when we soar, when it all makes sense, when it feels like it all has purpose and meaning. And then there are all those other moments—the lows and aches and failures and struggles and experiences that leave us wondering what the point of it all is. Are our lives ultimately bits and pieces and fragments—you try to find a little peace and hope and then it’s over? Or is there more going on here?

In our increasingly polarized and disoriented world, Everything Is Spiritual gives us a radical new take on how it all fits together, how it works, how it’s all connected. Part memoir, part extended riff on the quantum nature of reality, part history of the universe, Rob Bell takes us back through the twists and turns and struggles of his story in order to help us see the larger story so that we can reconnect with our story.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250620583
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/14/2021
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	208,509
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Rob Bell is a New York Times bestselling author of books including Velvet Elvis, Drops Like Stars, and Love Wins, which have been translated into 25 languages. His podcast, called RobCast, was named by iTunes Best of 2015. He's toured with Oprah, been profiled in The New Yorker, and in 2011, Time magazine named him one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World. He does regular shows at Largo, a comedy and music club in Los Angeles, where he lives with his wife Kristen and their three kids.

Hometown:

Grand Rapids, Michigan

Date of Birth:

August 23, 1970

Place of Birth:

Lansing, Michigan

Education:

B.S., Wheaton College, 1992; M. Div., Fuller Seminary, 1995

Editorial Reviews

06/29/2020

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. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"In Everything Is Spiritual, Rob Bell updates Teilhard de Chardin’s Catholic mysticism, makes sexier Werner Heisenberg’s quantum physics, and baptizes Jewish Kabbalah in an exciting vision of the future of human evolution. Bell challenges the notion that science and belief are at war with his sublime fusion of Christian faith and modern evolutionary science. Bell’s book is the perfect antidote to the plague of an evangelical worldview that is captive to imperial dreams and a literalism that kills the spirit of Christianity. Everything Is Spiritual is a bracing and stirring manifesto for a fresh contemporary vision of an ancient faith." — MICHAEL ERIC DYSON, New York Times bestselling author of TEARS WE CANNOT STOP

“Nobody else can take ancient teachings and modern science, and blend them together into wisdom that makes sense to me, and heals me. Rob’s unorthodox and bold thinking stirs my intellect, comforts my heart, and makes me believe that — within all the frightening chaos of the unknowable universe — I still have a sacred place. His work is a sacred gift to a troubled world.” — ELIZABETH GILBERT, New York Times bestselling author of BIG MAGIC and CITY OF GIRLS

“Bell is at the forefront of a rethinking of Christianity in America.” — TIME MAGAZINE

“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’s vigorous, quirky outing will appeal to progressive Christians.” —Publishers Weekly

“Bell looks at the world, at the universe, with both childlike wonder and insatiable curiosity. A lovely, poetic meditation on what brings us together." —Booklist

From the Publisher

09/18/2020

Pastor Bell (What Is the Bible?) attempts to cover a lot in this semiautobiographical look at the meaning of life—and that's part of the problem. Written in Bell's signature poetic style, the work is at its best when examining his family of origin and its history of unacknowledged grief, which has had far-reaching generational effects. Bell's subsequent storytelling about his career arc, including his ministerial rise and fall, lacks the intensity of the early part of the book and proves less engaging. Perhaps this is because Bell expounds on the theory of quantum physics to explain his conclusion that there is an all-encompassing, ever-evolving spiritual relationship that binds our universe. While this theory has been expressed by many thinkers (particularly those of the New Age movement) and Bell's focus on the power of and necessity for love is reassuring, the abstract quality of the prose might lose some readers. Bell's use of line breaks for emphasis when making his points can also grow tedious. VERDICT A sincere but not particularly compelling effort.—Gail Eubanks, Univ. of Missouri, Springfield

Library Journal

2020-07-07
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.

Kirkus Reviews