The Journey of Evelyn Underhill

My parish has a spiritual growth program called Wellspring that, according to its mission statement, offers “programs and services (that) foster awareness of God’s presence and provide encouragement and support for spiritual exploration.”  While we were hammering out this mission statement, one of us shared that she read this sentence to her elderly mother, who replied, “Why on earth would you want to do that?”

Of course, the old woman was only saying the quiet part out loud. My wife’s grandparents were sent to church and Sunday school by parents who stayed home, and my father hardly ever darkened the door of our church. Many people, especially in former times when churchgoing offered more social advantages than it does now, viewed the church as a benevolent-but-impenetrable institution that offered moral training and a social foothold for the children, while an alleged and aloof Deity looked on from a distance. Why make a fuss about it?

One advantage of the secularization of society and the demise of the “Christian consensus” is that, in the absence of social, political, and professional advantages to be gained by churchgoing, more people who join and attend a church are specifically interested in seeking and serving God, and in finding a community that supports them in that (as distinct from “society” that may or might not). And once the church-as-usual boxes have been checked off, they are likely to want something more—something spiritually fulfilling, some enrichment of the inner life.

This is an inflection point in the spiritual life. Many seekers begin to study other traditions in their quest for understanding. I have, myself, studied Vedanta and Tantra (both Indian traditions), Buddhism, and Druidry, whilst remaining Christian. Some, like Alan Watts, a former Episcopal priest, become aggregators of world spiritualities, continually mining the riches of various faiths until their Christian identity recedes into the background. An increasing number leave all explicit, institutional religion behind and join the ranks of the “spiritual, but not religious.” 

Sometimes, though, people move in the other direction. According to an article by John Francis of the Evelyn Underhill Association, the English writer and mystic’s journey could be divided into three segments, in each of which her orbit around Christ and the church became tightened as her thought developed. 

Evelyn Underhill, one of the founders of the retreat movement and the revival of Anglican contemplative spirituality, was born in 1875, and grew up in a time of great spiritual ferment—the time of George Steiner, Madame Blavatsky, and Aleister Crowley. For a while, she was a Neo-Platonist, and belonged to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which practiced “ceremonial magic.” (Think Dr. Faust.) Her early books, like Mysticism and Practical Mysticism and The Mystic Way show the influence of Neo-Platonic thought. (Neo-Platonism, a religious thought system derived from Plato and Plotinus, is the background to many of the non-canonical “Gnostic” gospels.) These early works aim at a psychologized mysticism whose goal was a “unitive life” of uninterrupted inner connection with the Divine. 

Beginning around 1920, her thought began to shift away from theosophical speculation toward Christian orthodoxy. She became “convinced her that relating to God is not a matter of ‘flight of the alone to the Alone,’ but rather a loving engagement with one’s daily life and with others.”  Her books from this period include The Spiritual Life.

During this time, she began corresponding with Baron Friedrich von Hügel, a Roman Catholic German émigré in Britain whose circle of admirers included John Henry Newman. Under Hügel’s influence, she became increasingly interested in the sacraments and the institutional church (which for her, unlike Newman, remained Anglican). John Francis writes,

Underhill’s perspective moves toward a more Christocentric view. She sees the goal of the spiritual life as a participation in Christ’s own rescuing mission in the world. The spiritual life still involves “the tendency of the created spirit to union with that Spirit-God,” but the concept of union is understood more precisely. The unitive life is a sacramental life, which includes an obligation to be part of Christ’s sacrificial body. 

Underhill’s “later period”, which Francis dates from 1934 to her death in 1941, can be seen as an intensification of her middle period, rather than a change of direction. She wrote more and more about the sacramental life of the church. Her best-known book from this, appropriately, Worship.

Underhill’s migration from theosophy and Neo-Platonism to sacramental Christianity may reassure parents who see their kids becoming unmoored from their early teaching. My own children, both in college now, grew up in church and attended Quaker schools, and each is, in her own way, a spiritual seeker. If my seminarian friends are right about house churches being the future of Christianity, maybe they’ll join one when they have kids of their own.

Throughout her life, Underhill taught that the way of contemplative prayer is not just for monastic communities, but for everyone. Later in life, she became known as a lecturer and retreat leader. She died on June 15, 1941.