After moving io Morden College in February I spent the first four weeks unpacking books and arranging them in categories and alphabetical order by author. There are shelves of architecture, railways, psychotherapy, LGBTQIA+, Christian LGBTQI+, Christian history, God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Theology, Spirituality and Visionary prophets. It wasn’t easy to decide to which of the last two categories many books belonged.
Five or more years ago, I’d written over 140,000 words, a history of religion and Christianity, to help me understand where my ideas, especially my ideas about contemplative spirituality, gender and sexuality, fit into the supposedly historical, orthodox Christian tradition.
Having lived with the books arranged on the shelves for a few weeks, I realised there are many books from the last century, 1900 – 1990, that have inspired and resourced my theology and spiritual practice, but that for the last thirty years, focused on Changing Attitude and the campaign for LGBTQIA+ equality, I’d neglected. I began to take books off the shelves and refresh my memory. I would then remember other titles and authors and search for their books. I was excited to rediscover the wisdom, truth and radical visions of these visionaries and contemplatives. I drew up a list.
The List
William James 1842 – 1910
Rudolf Otto 1869 – 1937
Evelyn Underhill 1875 – 1941
Teilhard de Chardin 1875 – 1941
F. C. Happold 1893 – 1971
Bede Griffiths 1906 – 1993
Mircea Eliade 1907 – 1986
Thomas Merton 1915 – 1968
Verna Dozier 1917 – 2006
Sebastian Moore 1917 – 2014
Harry Williams 1919 – 2006
William Johnson 1925 – 2010
Dorothy Sollee 1929 – 2003
Peter L. Berger 1929 – 2010
Anthony de Mello 1931 – 1987
Richard Holloway 1933 -
Fritjof Capra 1939 -
Matthew Fox 1940 –
Rupert Sheldrake 1942 -
Eckhart Tolle 1948 –
Ken Wilbur 1949 –
Some of you will be familiar with some of these authors. Talking with friends, I discovered that to those of a generation or two younger than me, they are mostly entirely unknown. There is a category of books and authors omitted from the list, books read in compiling my lengthy unpublished history. They are the theologians from the era of South Bank Religion, Honest to God and Soundings.
I began to talk with close friends about my excitement at rediscovering the wisdom of books that had inspired my faith in earlier decades. One friend suggest I should write a book about, say, eight of them, 40,000 words describing what the Church needs to learn today from their wisdom and insight. All were born in the latter half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century and published between 1900 and 1990. I started to re-read Bede Griffiths autobiography The Golden String (1954) and re-discovered how deeply immersed he was in Buddhist teachings and spiritual practice. I leafed through his last published book, A New Vision of Reality (1989) and was somewhat amazed to discover that he was writing about authors dismissed by “conservative orthodox Christians” as “New Age”, books I discovered in my psychotherapy training.
This week I’ve been sitting in the shade re-reading William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience and making notes. I wanted to let you know what I’m doing that justifies my GoFundMe appeal. Supplementary elements are needed after a day spent reading, typing, and beginning to formulate the personal narrative that formed my Christian spiritual practice and vision.
Here is an excerpt from The Varieties of Religious Experience, words that both appeal to me and issue a warning:
Lectures XIV and XV, pp 302-303
“A genuine first-hand religious experience like George Fox’s is bound to be a heterodoxy to its witnesses, the prophet appearing as a mere lonely madman. If his doctrine prove contagious enough to spread to any others, it becomes a definite and labeled heresy. But if it then proves contagious enough to triumph over persecution, it becomes itself an orthodoxy; and when a religion has become an orthodoxy, its day of inwardness is over: the spring is dry; the faithful live at second hand exclusively and stone the prophets in their turn. The new church, in spite of whatever human goodness if may foster, can henceforth be counted on as a staunch ally in every attempt to stifle the spontaneous religious spirit, and to stop all later bubblings of the fountain from which in purer days it drew its own supply of inspiration. Unless, indeed, by adopting new movements of the spirit it can make capital out of them and use them for its selfish corporate designs!
“The plain fact is that human minds are built, as has been often said, in water-tight compartments. Religious after a fashion, they yet have many other things in them beside their religion, and unholy entanglements and associations inevitably obtain. The basenesses so commonly charged to religion’s account are thus, almost all of them, not chargeable at all to religion proper, but rather to religion’s wicked practical partner, the spirit of corporate dominion. And the bigotries are most of them in their turn chargeable to religion’s wicked intellectual partner, the spirit of dogmatic dominion, the passion for laying down the law in the form of an absolutely closed-in theoretic system. The ecclesiastical spirit in general is the sum of these two spirits of dominion; and I beseech you never to confound the phenomena of mere tribal or corporate psychology which it presents with those manifestations of the purely interior life which are the exclusive object of our study.”
Any contribution to my work on this book, no matter how small, will make a difference. I’m grateful to supporters who have already contributed – thank you.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/colin-coward-mbe-changing-attitude-and-unadulterated-love