It is no secret that something is going on with spirituality. Whether it is merely a passing fad, a genuine renewal, or some strange combination of both, it is not going unnoticed in the religious or secular media. Even Newsweek declared that prayer is alive and well in America! Publishers are responding by printing a plethora of resources. Thus some discernment is in order.
In the latter half of the 1970s, two books on spirituality by unknown authors won wide acclaim and attention. Kenneth Leech, an Anglican priest in England, published Soul Friend in 1977; Richard J. Foster, an evangelical Quaker, published A Celebration of Discipline in 1978. Both contributed substantially to the blooming interest in spirituality among both evangelical and mainline Christians. They now are staples in study groups and spirituality courses throughout North America and England.
Each author has a strong commitment to social justice. Neither made the lamentable mistake of separating spirituality and social concern. In faithfulness to biblical tradition, each stressed that being prayerful meant an active commitment to God's reign on Earth as in heaven.
Since then, both authors published several more books. Unfortunately, Leech's excellent books (including True Prayer, The Social Good, and Experiencing God) have not received much attention in North America.
In the last year, both produced important new books addressing the upsurge of interest in spirituality. Foster outlines basic approaches to prayer, while Leech challenges any spirituality cut off from social justice.
Foster's is the easier read. He contends that it is not enough to be interested in spirituality. God, he argues, yearns and aches for us to "come home" by becoming more prayerful. Prayer is not primarily techniques or methods but the cultivation of a loving relationship with God. Foster deepens the reader's desire to experience such a passion. He discusses 21 different kinds of prayer, including adoration, rest, suffering, meditation, contemplation, intercession, and prayers of the forsaken. Prayer moves us inward to personal transformation, upward toward intimacy with God, and outward to minister with others.
This primer on prayer is gentle, often addressing common qualms, fears, concerns, and hesitations. Foster absorbs and assimilates an astonishing breadth of sources: spiritual, mystical, and devotional classics. His view of spirituality is influenced by Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants, pietists, evangelicals, and the holiness movement. Not many can do this with integrity, but Foster can and does. This work will help many to build bridges between once-alienated traditions.
Yet it does not satisfy. Foster tries to cover too much. Because of the quantity and breadth of subjects, chapters are too short. As a result this book, which Foster apparently intends to be his most important work ever, leaves one hungering for more - more explanation, more detail, more help. That's not all bad. In hungering we just might be fortunate enough to move beyond methods and techniques toward direct hungering for God.
Foster calls all readers to a more deeply loving and prayerful relationship with God. This will interest many and - perhaps best of all - can be used in a variety of contexts.
LEECH BRINGS a refreshing and even abrasive passion that comes from being an inner-city pastor for decades in England. He contends that there is an essential unity of Christian spirituality and social and political commitment. He is appalled by the all-too-common phenomenon of spirituality being misused to avoid commitment.
Leech is cynically wary of spirituality being "in" again. He says that private approaches to prayer (connected to a dualism of body and spirit) are rooted in the Western church and often mean that prayer is used to reinforce the status quo. He scorns the "culture of false inwardness."
Leech examines the strengths and weaknesses of the social gospel. He takes heart in a "new synthesis" that enables us to reassert the corporate nature of spirituality. Included in this synthesis are: the legacy of John Wesley, much of the renewal in the Roman Catholic church since Vatican II, liberation theology, black spirituality, and a new evangelical consciousness.
He takes heart in the spirituality of liberation that emerged from the struggles of African Americans, women, Third World communities, and gay and lesbian people. He also addresses the dangers and threats of all kinds of fundamentalism, particularly the Christian Right. This is a passionate call for involvement; he argues carefully for a Catholic socialist analysis.
His critiques of Thatcherism easily apply to Canada or the United States. The churches, he says, "have seen the devastation of the inner cities and the incomprehension and perplexity of those politicians who have descended, heavily guarded, usually after some disturbance. They have watched the decline in health care, documented in report after report, and the refusal of the government to accept the evidence. They have watched the marked shift from struggle to complacency and the institutionalization of selfishness."
Leech warns against many pitfalls of involvement: getting distracted by "ambulance ministries," giving up and being disillusioned, being swamped as individuals, not being rooted in community. He argues for a healthy spirituality to guard against such dangers.
The most powerful chapter reflects on his experience of pastoring in the inner city where contemplation and prayer were essential: "How am I, as an urban pastor, to find spiritual resources that will enable that struggle for justice and that resistance to the oppressive powers to be sustained and to flourish in what is often unpromising ground? How am I to make creative and redemptive sense of all this anger, despair, and pain that surrounds me and all who work in the inner cities?...It is here, not elsewhere, that I have to discern the activity of God, the signs of the times, the distortions and tragedies - and the potential - of human history."
Leech notes: "Christian spirituality is thoroughly materialistic, incarnational, earthy, and fleshly. The genuineness, the reality, of our spiritual claims has to be tested out amidst the dust and dirt of the back streets. Spirituality cannot exist in a vacuum, in some esoteric private realm....It is an urgent task to bring spirituality back to earth, back to the common life; only then can it be Christ-ian." Reflections on significant mentors who promoted an incarnational view of God's reign include Julian of Norwich, John of the Cross, Thomas Merton, and Dorothy Day.
The book challenges but nourishes and nurtures also. Leech gives practical advice on prayer. He builds resources for living with darkness and desolation, even detailing a manifesto for a renewed spirituality.
While Foster's book is a primer to help launch good beginnings, Leech's book has a richness that cannot be plumbed in one reading. The profundity of this book guarantees that it can be profitably re-read often during the course of one's life. This is a powerful resource for rebuilding church communities into prayerful pilgrim people who walk with the wounded, struggle for justice, and are agents for God's healing.
Arthur Paul Boers was pastor of Bloomingdale (Ontario) Mennonite Church and the author of Lord, Teach Us to Pray and On Earth as in Heaven (both Herald Press) when this review appeared.
The Eye of the Storm: Living Spirituality in the Real World. By Kenneth Leech. HarperSanFrancisco, 1992. $19 (cloth).
Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home. By Richard Foster. HarperSanFrancisco, 1992. $17 (cloth).
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