NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From one of the world’s most influential spiritual thinkers, a long-awaited book exploring what it means that Jesus was called “Christ,” and how this forgotten truth can restore hope and meaning to our lives.
“Anyone who strives to put their faith into action will find encouragement and inspiration in the pages of this book.”—Melinda Gates
In his decades as a globally recognized teacher, Richard Rohr has helped millions realize what is at stake in matters of faith and spirituality. Yet Rohr has never written on the most perennially talked about topic in Christianity: Jesus. Most know who Jesus was, but who was Christ? Is the word simply Jesus’s last name? Too often, Rohr writes, our understandings have been limited by culture, religious debate, and the human tendency to put ourselves at the center.
Drawing on scripture, history, and spiritual practice, Rohr articulates a transformative view of Jesus Christ as a portrait of God’s constant, unfolding work in the world. “God loves things by becoming them,” he writes, and Jesus’s life was meant to declare that humanity has never been separate from God—except by its own negative choice. When we recover this fundamental truth, faith becomes less about proving Jesus was God, and more about learning to recognize the Creator’s presence all around us, and in everyone we meet.
Thought-provoking, practical, and full of deep hope and vision, The Universal Christ is a landmark book from one of our most beloved spiritual writers, and an invitation to contemplate how God liberates and loves all that is.
Never has a book so thoroughly reframed the concept of faith and God in my life as ‘The Universal Christ’ did. In elegance and sheer simplicity Richard Rohr encapsulated everything I have been reconstructing in my own life, and offered a hope that there is a better way, a universal application of understanding and love in a Divine Reality that transcends how our modern society has described God. This book offers an ancient and better way of understanding God, and will undoubtedly be with me for many years to come as I walk out my faith journey.
