Twentieth Century Anglican Theologians

From Evelyn Underhill to Esther Mombo

Stephen Burns, Bryan Cones, James Tengatenga, Stephen Burns, Bryan Cones, James Tengatenga

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781119611356
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

A scholarly volume that reflects the rich diversity of Anglican theology

With contributions from an international panel of writers, Twentieth-Century Anglican Theologians offers a wide-ranging view that presents a survey of over twenty diverse Anglican thinkers. The book explores well-known figures including William Temple, Austin Farrer, Donald MacKinnon, and John A.T. Robinson. These theologians are set in a wider context alongside others from India, China, Australia, Ghana, and elsewhere. Notably, the subjects include a number of women from Evelyn Underhill, the first woman to teach the clergy of the Church of England, to Esther Mombo, a major contemporary Anglican figure, from Kenya.

The book reflects the rich diversity of Anglicanism, suggesting the ongoing vitality of this religious tradition. This important book:

• Contains information on a number of prominent women Anglican thinkers
• Includes contributions from experts from around the world
• Presents material on both familiar figures and others that are unjustly little known

Written for students and teachers of Anglicanism, Anglican clergy, and ecumenical colleagues, Twentieth-Century Anglican Theologians is the first book to reflect the diversity of the Anglican tradition by considering its global theological representatives.

Chapter 1
Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941)

Julie Gittoes

Evelyn Underhill is well‐known as a prolific and influential writer who, in the midst of the upheavals of the early twentieth century, brought the riches of ancient mystical texts to a wide audience. In our own generation, her insights remain challenging, inspiring, and practical. Her work opens up the meaning of life in communion with God: through honesty about her own struggles and through rekindling an interest in the diverse lives of the mystics.

At the heart of her work is the conviction that God extends an invitation to be loved to every human being: her own quest for God found expression in her vocation to write; to communicate in “plain and untechnical language” how people might participate in and experience the reality of that love (Underhill 1914b, p. 2). One of Underhill's biographers wrote that she believed “mysticism was a way of life, open to all, achieved by the few whose lives were transformed by that which they loved” (Greene 1991, p. 51).

It was this conviction that she shared by means of the written word and as a retreat conductor and broadcaster. The aim of this introduction to Underhill is to place her life and work by rooting it in her wider context, and discerning points of resonance with contemporary perspectives.

Underhill's life spanned the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: a period that saw significant changes in the lives of women but which was also shaped by the impact of two world wars. This social and political context will frame an exploration of her distinctive contribution to Christian theology, including her understanding of pacifism.

Underhill began writing as a poet and novelist and became an accomplished interdisciplinary scholar. The things that attracted her to the ordinary and extraordinary lives of saints and mystics was their passion, intelligence, and authority. Though her work, what was awakened in her is disseminated to us: not just transformed lives, but the power of the love divine provoking such transformation. Her own passion, intelligence, and authority finds its focus on the life of prayer and adoration. That, as well as her emphasis on both liturgy and service, makes her a figure of enduring influence within the Anglican Communion. This is perhaps best summed up in a line from one of her (handwritten) books of private prayers: “Let us ask for a closer communion with our God” (Wrigley‐Carr 2018, p. 11).

Pioneer

Born in 1875, Evelyn Underhill grew up in the final decades of the nineteenth century; and her life (and theology) was shaped both by positive changes to the lives of women, but also the impact of conflict. She was undoubtedly a pioneer as a woman studying mysticism and spirituality, becoming an authority on theology and prayer. As Ann Loades notes, she had “no qualifications and no institutional position such as a job in a church or university which might have been hers had she been a man” (Loades 1997, p. xi).

Over her lifetime, in Great Britain, there were significant changes to the lives of women in terms of legal rights, access to education, and the campaign for universal suffrage. Her accomplishments as a scholar and spiritual director are to be set against this backdrop of changing status. In 1867 the National Society for Women's Suffrage was formed. Following shortly after the Married Women's Property Act (1870) came into effect, which allowed married women to own property. It was not until 1918 that women over thirty (and men over twenty‐one) were granted the right to vote by the Representation of the People Act. A decade later women over the age of twenty‐one were given equal voting rights with men. These changes in law and suffrage were significant in themselves and also signaled something important in terms of intellectual freedom and educational equality. In the 1860s the Taunton Commission said that men and women had the same mental capacity. There were incremental shifts in access to education over the course of the nineteenth century, although gender and class continued to be limiting factors.

However, Underhill was well placed to take advantage of the growing possibilities. The daughter of a barrister, she had been educated at home and spent a spell at a private school. In addition, traveling to Europe nurtured her fluency in and capacity for languages. The opening of a Ladies' Department at King's College, London (KCL) was a significant opportunity for her. She read history and botany but it was her aptitude for languages along with the opportunity to engage with philosophical thought that was to shape her approach to scholarship.

Against this backdrop, her legacy in major works alone is significant: from the impact of Mysticism published in 1911 through to Worship, published toward the end of her life in 1936.¹ Among other noteworthy “firsts,” in 1921 she was the first woman invited to give a series of lectures in religion at Oxford.² In 1927, her alma mater welcomed her as their first woman Fellow; in 1938 she received an honorary Doctor of Divinity from the University of Aberdeen. That a married, lay Anglican woman had become an authoritative voice on spiritual life and mysticism was a significant accomplishment. It was one which Underhill embraced “quietly and without fuss,” in the words of A. M. Allchin (himself a priest and theologian who echoed Underhill's sensibilities) (Allchin 1993, p. 2).

As well as being a pioneer, she was also a pilgrim. As we will explore in the next section, she was influenced by both Roman Catholic and Anglican thinkers. Her own teaching, writing, and direction reflected the breadth and generosity of the ecumenical spirit. The personal is echoed in the wider context. In 1942 the British Council of Churches (now known as Churches Together in Britain and Ireland) was formed to foster interdenominational cooperation.

Allchin himself vividly describes his experience at an Evelyn Underhill festival held in Washington, DC: speakers from the Episcopal, Russian Orthodox, and Roman Catholic traditions – lay and ordained – talked about the way in which her work sustained, liberated and reshaped them.³ What he summarizes as her clarity, intensity, simplicity, and humor continues to be a gift to Anglicanism and other churches too. She was careful to weave together and engage with the different strands that shape what we have come to know as Anglican theology: “she herself became a notable exponent of the Anglican way with its respect for tradition and its openness to change, its sense of belonging to a Catholic whole which is more than simply English, yet which has its rootedness in the history and experience of a particular people” (Allchin 1993, p. 5).

In terms of shifts in Evelyn Underhill's own thought, one of the most marked was directly related to the seismic impact of two world wars. The context is made explicit in the Preface of Practical Mysticism. She considered postponing the publication of “this little book, written during the last months of peace, [that] goes to press in the first weeks of the great war” because it might be felt that in “a time of conflict and horror, when only the most ignorant, disloyal, or apathetic can hope for quietness of mind, a book which deals with that which is called the ‘contemplative’ attitude to existence is wholly out of place” (Underhill [1914b], p. 1).

Her rationale for going ahead is rooted in a seriousness about “practical” mysticism that cannot be a fair‐weather habit. Rather she sees in the lives of mystics – including Joan of Arc and Florence Nightingale – an intense spiritual vision in opposition to suffering and disharmony. She wrote that “it becomes part of true patriotism to keep the spiritual life, both of the individual citizen and the social group, active and vigorous” (Underhill [1914b], p. 2). Hope, beauty, and charity lay beyond violence and ruthlessness. Underhill herself worked at the Admiralty (naval intelligence department), but her views changed. In 1939 she adopted a Christian pacifist stance, joining the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship – writing a pamphlet entitled The Church and War in 1940. This sacrificial understanding of pacifism is related to her developments in understanding the doctrine of the incarnation.

Pilgrim

Evelyn Underhill's pioneering work was rooted in her journey of faith as well as her impressive learning, which included psychology, philosophy, theology, liturgy, and languages. Best known for Mysticism (1911) and Worship (1936) these texts reveal the scope of her thinking and depth of her scholarship as well as shifts in her thinking.

Beyond these major texts, which in a sense “bookend” her life and work, Underhill was exceptionally prolific in producing articles, addresses, essays, and letters as well as other books. There are many substantial biographies of, or introductions to, Underhill (e.g., Armstrong 1975; Greene 1991; Loades 1997). The purpose of this section is to note the figures who shaped Underhill’s own exploration of religion. Through the lens of her personal life, we see something of the shifts in her thinking, but also the depth and scope of learning that opened up the lives of the saints to those seeking...