With thanks for the life and witness of Philip Newell

11/25

Philip Newell

I  got the news while standing in the security line in the Schoenfeld Airport in Berlin. My mentor and friend Philip Newell was dead at age 90. Objectively speaking, I probably learned more from Philip than anyone else in my life. Memories and sadness all at once.

Philip’s invaluable role as part of the logistical infrastructure of the Civil Rights movement and his quiet pastoral support of key leaders will likely be documented elsewhere. He could be the trusted friend of these leaders  because he never sought the spotlight for himself. When asked about those days, he would smile and say, "If everyone who said they were on the Pettit Bridge with Dr.King had actually been on it, it would have collapsed.”

When I first met him, 40 years ago,  as a young urban minister in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Philip was one of a vanishing, well, vanished, era of church bureaucrats who saw their work as seeing what was going on in church in the world and providing all the help possible. As Philip said it, “ If God wants something to be done in the world, it is already being done. My job is to find it and bring all the resources I can.” And he did. He knew how to find resources— and also preserve them so that they would be there for those who were really doing something. 

I was amazed how as a consultant, he could quickly gain the confidence of an interviewee and discover what mattered to them, what motivated them  and what they would commit to. ( That was a skill that worked equally well with restaurant servers. And there’s this: more than once on a trip we'd go to a sports arena and go to the Will Call window and ask for seats left for “Father Newell”. And look incredulous when there were none. Somehow seats always showed up. )

He would look at you and say ” I'm looking for the kind who of person who wakes up in the morning, hits the shower and says to himself ‘what can I do today to move the mission  for Gods people in this city forward?’ Are you that kind of person?” And you very much wanted to be and have him believe you were.

He was the church’s connection to organized labor and the network of community organizers around the country. He was equally at home with John Calvin and Karl Marx and a believer in the Gospel of Sol (Alinsky.) He taught me, as per Paulo Freire, that our call is to help others become “the subjects of their own history.” He introduced me to Ignacio Silone and Bread and Wine. As he read the passage where the father grieves his son just murdered by the fascists, Philip would choke up, tears in his voice and eyes.

He enjoyed a good meal, a good glass of wine and a good cigar. He was particular. The first time I ordered him a Corona and it arrived with a lime in it, he was very clear: “ I don’t want damned fruit in my beer,” He was comfortable at all levels of society. He had the height, the voice, the mien, to be a tall steeple preacher, but no desire. He preferred the small struggling churches, people at the grass roots. His greatest disdain was for those with self-inflated egos who sought the spotlight for themselves. 

He opened the national church to me. Brought me to New York twice, once as an interim consultant and once to the call at West Park that lasted 22 years. And he performed my marriage.  I kept at this work in part because I believe I owed him a debt. 

I learned from him: 

• Never trust liberals. They never count the votes. Which translated into never go into an important meeting without knowing the vote count going in. 
• Leaders are people with followers, it’s that simple. 
• Power is never the problem. The lack of power is. 
• Movements don't last. Organizations do. Organize. 
• In organizing, you can never skip a step. And relationships are everything.
• Organizations that are truly of their community don't depend on grants for their ongoing life, they live by serious money, locally raised.

It was a way of understanding the life of faith  that  shaped my own thinking. Those lessons prove true over and over, in both my successes and failures.

He was not always an easy man. And no stranger to tragedy. But truly  blessed by the  graces of a decades long marriage with Madeline Tram.

He was a man. A mentor. A friend. I loved him. And I will miss him. 

There is a Jewish tradition that the foundations of the world are held in place by a select number of hidden righteous that no one sees or knows. Today there is one less.

Thanks for your life and witness, Philip. RIP