Clouds of Unknowing

The second main influence was from the mystical and contemplative traditions within Christianity following a move to a new town because of my job. Having entered Christianity through its Evangelical and then Charismatic expressions, I found a church which was in harmony with that. It was an Anglican church which was just 10 minutes walk from where I lived.

While there, I met a number of people, one of whom later became my wife, who had connections with a wider range of Christian expressions including Roman Catholic and contemplative traditions.

I found a great richness in these other traditions which I had only been vaguely aware of and I wanted to find out more. This led me to read books by St. Theresa of Avila and Thomas Merton amongst others, albeit probably too early in my prayer life, but I was drawn to them.

At first sight, the Charismatics and the Contemplatives seem poles apart, the former with exuberant and often noisy worship and the latter with an emphasis on silence and quieting the soul. What they did have in common was a desire to relate to God in a direct emotional, spiritual and immediate manner. The emphasis was on communion with God rather than knowing about God intellectually. Both expressions practised being lovingly attentive to God and letting Him do what He wished.

One striking effect of the Charismatic Renewal was to breathe new life into a wide variety of Christian expressions including both Evangelical and Sacramental forms and enabling believers from one tradition to more appreciate the practices of another. At a time when denominations were very much isolated from each other and often antagonistic, this “coming together” of the Church was wonderful.

The 1980s were for me a time of exploration and was able to go to a retreat in Yorkshire entitled “Contemplation in Charismatic worship” which was led by worship leaders in the Charismatic expression who showed me how both could work together. Following that, I went on retreat at a Carmelite Priory which focused on Contemplation. There was no contradiction between the two and I was quite surprised when the retreat guide, who was a Roman Catholic priest, described speaking in tongues as an indication of closeness to God.

My exploration led me to attend gatherings at the C. S. Lewis centre , a local Catholic monastery, an Anglican convent, services at Anglo-Catholic churches and a Christian community who specialised in liturgical and sacred dance, as well as meeting with friends who shared the faith.

While I felt a pull towards the wider church which had a ring of truth and wholesomeness about it, there was a push away from the Evangelicalism of the church I was based at.

This church, as well as many others at the time, had followed a path which some call “believism”, based on a literal interpretation of verses such as Mark 11:24 “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” Taken literally, this clearly didn’t work even though there was a strong pressure to act as if it did and to be accused of lack of faith or “unbelief” if we didn’t.

While I retained my belief in the inspiration of Scripture, and still do, it seemed clear that that particular branch of Charismatic Evangelicalism had gone off track.

When the church became large, they decided to split in two. One group favoured the “believism” position while the other leaned more towards the style of the Vineyard church in California which had become very influential. While being free of the extremism of the former, I found it a very constraining and scripted form of worship and ministry and lacking the freedom and richness of other, and earlier, forms of Charismatic worship particularly in Catholic prayer groups.

[1] Francis A. Schaeffer, “The God who is there”, Inter-Varsity Press, 1968
[2] William Shakespeare, Hamlet.
[3] Jean-Paul Satre