Evelyn Underhill: an Anglican “Spiritual Ecumenist”

Introduction: a vision of unity

In 1887, Evelyn Underhill’s friend, Amy Turton, had a vision of people ascending the great mountain of the Lord—ascending in various ways. The climbers were united in their common goal to reach the summit but the ascent proved difficult and complicated. At the lower stages of this mountain journey, the different routes of ascension had high, solid, dividing walls, providing direction and guidance. However, as the ascent proceeded, climbers began to experience these walls as “narrowing” and “hindering,” but they also found places where the walls had broken down, allowing movement from one ascent route to another. As the climbers neared the mountain summit, the walls became “lower and less clearly divided,” providing encouragement to the pilgrims. But some who had passed from one way to another became “perplexed” about the path, and sometimes those following them were “disturbed and troubled at their change.” ¹

I invite you to hold this image of the complexities of the mountain ascent in your imagination, as we begin our exploration of Evelyn Underhill as an Anglican “spiritual ecumenist.”

Deathbed prayers

Thirty-four years following Underhill’s death in 1941, a penciled note was discovered in a secondhand book at a London bookshop, describing Underhill’s final four weeks of life. It read,

She sent messages to many people asking for prayers . . . for union of Christian Churches. She went through a good bit of pain which reached a climax when the distress seemed to be spiritual rather than physical . . . we thought she was dying. Then next morning . . . she [was] in an ecstasy of triumph . . . she knew that something had been accomplished . . . She was rejoicing in God and Christ . . . [and] fell asleep very peacefully. ²

This firsthand observation reveals Underhill’s final offering of life as an Anglican, spiritual ecumenist. In this article, I argue that Underhill wasn’t just “truly ecumenical” (as described by her friend, Lucy Menzies), ³ but that Underhill viewed prayer as the essential ingredient required for Church unity, the only way that Jesus’ prayer in John 17—“that they all may be one”—could become reality. In this article, I argue that Underhill’s spiritual ecumenism is an essential aspect of her spiritual legacy. I trace the outlines of Underhill’s spiritual pilgrimage leading to her conviction that prayer is central to ecumenism, and highlight Underhill’s experiences of the vitality of the “invisible links” possible with communities praying for Church unity. But first, I provide an extremely brief introduction to her life.

Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941) ⁴

Underhill tells us she was “not brought up” on religion ⁵ , which may have helped her be open to appreciate and enter into different ways of ascending the mountain of the Lord. Though an excess of school chapel services destroyed her father’s interest in the Church, the family’s motto, “Live and Love,” embossed on the family notepaper, provides a hint concerning Underhill’s upbringing as a single child. ⁶

On the eve of Underhill’s seventeenth birthday, she reflected, “I hope my mind will not grow tall to look down on things, but wide to embrace all sorts of things.” ⁷ This open, humble expansiveness, willing to embrace diverse religious practices, became a hallmark of Underhill’s posture for ecumenical engagement. Following school, Underhill studied history, botany, philosophy, and social sciences at King’s College for Women in London and became a Fellow in 1927.

Influence of Italian art

From 1898, Underhill’s yearly trips to Italy nurtured her religious sensibility. Gazing at Fra Angelico’s frescos led her toward a “gradual, unconscious growing into an understanding of things.” ⁸ “Crucifixion and Saints” greatly impacted Underhill. This fresco reveals the crucified Christ surrounded by historical founders of religious Orders and Church Fathers. ⁹ Years later, Underhill described it as depicting

representatives of all men and women of prayer of every type—indeed, all Christians of good will . . . and everyone linked with the Crucified, living in His aura, working for His sake. They all carry through into history by their own unlimited self-giving some fragment of His love and life. That is the very heart of religion; like an immense impetus of generosity, pouring out from the heart of Christ through His adoring servants of every sort and kind on the world. ¹⁰

But despite feeling drawn to Christ and the Church during yearly pilgrimages to Italy in the late nineteenth century, Underhill was completely detached from Christian community. In 1903, she became a member of an occult brotherhood, the Hermetic Society of the Golden Dawn, but Underhill tells us this “irresponsible period” did not last long. ¹¹

The “net closed in”

Underhill narrates her spiritual journey as being an atheist who frequented both English and Roman Churches, wishing she knew their “secret.” ¹² Following three days at a Catholic convent in 1907, gradually the “net closed in” and Underhill was driven nearer and nearer to Christianity, half “wishing it was true” and half “resisting violently.” ¹³ But “overcome by an overpowering vision,” she became “convinced” that the Catholic religion was true. ¹⁴ Underhill was ready to be received by Rome, but her fiancé’s horror plus the Catholic Modernist crisis halted her decision. This left her in a borderland of “spiritual homelessness” for over a decade before being able to contemplate any other “home” than Rome. Underhill’s foreign travels had shown her the Church of Rome at its “best,” whereas Anglicanism, she viewed as a “kind of treachery.” ¹⁵ So Underhill frequented the Carmelite Church at Kensington Church Street, enjoying their “spiritual central heating,” but struggling to keep the “flame of adoration burning bright” without the Sacraments; the “Divine Love was guiding her by a thorny way to the heights.” ¹⁶ Drifting during the war years without Church support, Underhill (in her words) “went to pieces.” ¹⁷ Her disembodied, abstract mysticism could not sustain her.

“The Baron” (1852–1925)

Von Hügel modeled for Underhill, loyalty to one’s Church affiliation, yet an openness to other parts of Christendom. Underhill described him as giving “so generously to many outside his own Communion” and displaying a willingness to “use, discriminate” and take “seriously” institutional practices from all branches of the Church. ³⁸ Though the Roman Church was the “sap” of von Hügel’s “spirit,” he was an early ecumenist, founding the London Society for the Study of Religion in 1904, selecting members to represent varied denominations. ³⁹

Underhill said of von Hügel, “I owe him my whole spiritual life”; he discerned Underhill’s over-dependence on “pure mysticism” and her need to develop a “mixed mysticism,” so her experiences could find “completion” and “safety in history and institutions.” ⁴⁰ He also believed Underhill badly needed “de-intellectualizing,” so he encouraged her to Church practices, particularly the Eucharist and visiting the poor. ⁴¹ Underhill wrote, “somehow” by the Baron’s “prayers, or something,” he “compelled” her to “experience” Christ. It was “like watching the sun rise very slowly—and then suddenly one knew what it was”; thereafter, reading the New Testament and taking Holy Communion became “alive and compellingly beautiful.” ⁴² Underhill also came to experience the reality of the Baron’s words, “We all need one another . . . souls, all souls are deeply interconnected. The Church at its best and deepest is just that—interdependence . . . interconnection.” ⁴³

Underhill’s pain

Though Underhill remained an Anglican all her life, it would be incorrect to paint the picture that she never struggled. We vividly see her pain when close friends converted to Rome, such as Ethel Barker in 1908 and Clara Smith in 1929. When Smith stopped attending Pleshey retreats, Underhill experienced a deep, heavy sorrow of “spiritual separation,” begging Sorella Maria for the “powerful,” invisible help of her prayers. ⁴⁴ Then in the 1930s, some Catholic friends told Underhill that her work for souls was wasted and harmful if she wasn’t a Roman Catholic. Reginald Somerset Ward reassured and “cleared” her mind on this matter. But throughout her life, Underhill deeply resonated with Catholic spirituality, as identified by the Baron’s biographer, Bédoyère, who described her letters as written by a “great Anglican with a Catholic mind.” ⁴⁵ Even the Dean of St Paul’s, Dr. Matthews, the editor who persuaded Underhill to write her book, Worship, reflected that Underhill’s “approach” was so “definitely Catholic,” and he feared she “might not be sympathetic enough” with Protestant traditions of worship, and for the “purpose” of the series, it was “important” that wasn’t “too apparent.” ⁴⁶

Though Underhill lamented the “spiritual treasure of the Church Universal . . . our forebears tossed aside at the Reformation,” by 1933, Underhill discerned that “bit by bit the Spirit” was “giving” it “back” to English Christianity and she felt a “great call to help” in that “renewal”—that “work of God.” But Underhill also reiterated a “deep truth” uttered by Sorella Maria: “The Venerable Roman Church does not preside at the Universal Agape.” ⁴⁷ Having established Underhill’s Church affiliation and openness to other branches of the Church, we now consider the “object” of the Spiritual Entente in her life and writings—to “hasten the coming” of God’s Kingdom by promoting spiritual union between believers.

Prayer—our participation as “vessels”

Underhill told her Prayer Group that intercession is our “corporate responsibility” and “duty,” for the Church “continues” Jesus’ work on earth, primarily through prayer. ⁹² Rather than viewing prayer as about our “spiritual improvement,” Underhill emphasized prayer as adoration and becoming “channels of His saving love” as we intercede. ⁹³ During wartime, Underhill saw intercession as their “spiritual war-work”—one of the “greatest things” they could do for humanity. ⁹⁴ As the Prayer Group lifted to God the world’s “suffering, need and sin,” they became a “path along which God’s healing love” could “flow”; His light “penetrate,” “pacify,” and heal. ⁹⁵

Retreat leading

From 1924 to 1937, Underhill led retreats. Apart from Worship, her books in her final fifteen years were based on retreat talks. Retreats provided opportunities for a “spot of spiritual rebirth,” and perhaps even beginning “like cats, to see a bit in the dark.” ⁹⁹ Underhill led retreats for all branches of the Church, with her first retreat for the interdenominational, “Time and Talents Group.” The organizer had not found it easy to find a conductor for “such a group,” but felt sure Underhill was suitable. Underhill’s face lit up when asked; it was something she had longed to do. ¹⁰⁰ She challenged these first retreatants—“It won’t make you grow to get inside a comfortable religious system that suits you, and look over the edge like a cat in a basket . . . sitting on your devotional cushion purring.” ¹⁰¹ While leading this retreat, Underhill’s close friends were praying, and she experienced being part of a “cell in a boundless living web through which redeeming work can be done . . . sharing and exchanging strength and prayer—being one’s self but never alone”—part of the “Mystical Body.” ¹⁰²

It was unusual at this stage to have a female conductor of retreats in the Church of England, but Underhill led Anglican priests in Liverpool in 1926, publishing her talks as Concerning the Inner Life. Thereafter, Underhill was invited to lead retreats for various Church leaders, including Nonconformist ministers and Quakers in 1927, and Free Church ministers in 1928. ¹⁰³ Cropper tells us, Underhill had never been a “narrow Christian,” having “seen as much as any great teacher of her time of the varying Christian bodies,” and she asked her friends to pray for “My Baptist ministers, My Wesleyan Church workers,” Anglican ventures, Presbyterian Lucy, and the Franciscan, Sorella Maria. ¹⁰⁴

“The Hill of the Lord”

This article began with Turton’s vision of people ascending the mountain of the Lord. In 1927, Underhill drew upon this vision when lamenting the unexpected defeat of the Anglican Prayer Book revisions. She had tried to be a “mediator” in this process and experienced the outcome as a “desperate business,” with both sets of “extremists” being adamant and quite unable to understand each other. ¹²³ As well as observing disunity laid bare, Underhill also discerned what she described as “a self-willed use of prayer”; the “bands of people” in Palace Yard praying that the Measure not pass, seemed to Underhill like “an answer to prayer gone wrong.” ¹²⁴ The title of her article was “The Hill of the Lord,” clearly referring to Psalm 24. She argued,

It seems to be implicit in the very nature of religious controversy, that it so easily persuades those engaging in it, to adopt an even lower and more limited standpoint. Like persons sliding down the opposite sides of a mountain, they steadily recede from those summits where they might be at one; and each new shower of stones, announces a constantly accelerated retreat, which inevitably drives them further and further apart. ¹²⁵

What is the solution? Underhill invited them to

A recovery of that sense of the mountain which makes the true mountaineer, and reduces to their true proportion, the alpine adventures of men, in religious terms, a fresh perception of the overwhelming majesty yet actualness of God, over against these small achievements, can alone bring the contending climbers peace. ¹²⁶

So having rallied all parties in the conflict, concerning their alternative routes to the mountain summit, Underhill closed her article, with Nicholas of Cusa’s words, “the wall of Paradise is built of contradictions,” perhaps indicating she felt the discussion had not been “conducted in the light” of what she regarded as the essential, foundational “principle”—seeing “persons and choices from the angle of Eternity.” ¹²⁷ Underhill believed, “The first term of the spiritual life must always be God’s hidden but felt Presence and action, His absolute priority. . .” ¹²⁸

A focus upon eternity

A focus on Eternity was a consistent hallmark of Underhill’s approach to life. Underhill invites us to climb the mountain of the Lord, experience the alpine view, and glimpse the big picture of “Eternity,” as she constantly reminded herself through her embroidered plaque. Focusing on the Eternal, we recognize the essential, sacrificial “response of the creature to the demand of Love.” This helps to protect us from viewing the Church from what Underhill describes as a “thin place” of “modern humanitarianism” or “economic regard”—those “ceaseless attempts to harness the supernatural, in the interests of our dark Satanic mills,” which look “very cheap” “over against” the awe-filled “priority of God, which the Bible forces again and again on our reluctant . . . utilitarian minds.” ¹²⁹

In 1932, in her retreat talks, The School of Charity, Underhill wrote, the “true demand of religion” is not “correct behavior or correct belief.” Instead, “generosity, is the controlling factor” in our relationship with God and others. For when we look out “towards this Love that moves the stars” and “claims our total allegiance,” we “see our human situation from a fresh angle,” as more “humble,” “dependent” and “splendid” than we had “dreamed,” for we cannot understand the outward events of our lives, except in their “relation to that unseen,” “intensely living world,” which “penetrates and supports us, the God whom we resist,” yet “thirst” for, who is “ever at work, transforming” our natural self-centered desires into the “wide-spreading, outpouring love of the citizen of Heaven.” ¹³⁰

Just a few years before her death, Underhill wrote that in “days that are coming,” Christianity

will have to move out from the churches and chapels, or rather, spread out far beyond the devotional focus of its life, and justify itself as a complete philosophy of existence, beautifying and enriching all levels of being, physical, social and mental as well as spiritual, telling the truth about God and humanity and casting its transfiguring radiance on the whole of that world, in which humanity has to live. ¹³¹

This will involve, argued Underhill, having the “courage to apply” our “inherent sacramentalism,” to the “whole mixed experience of humanity,” and in light of this interpretation, show humanity the “way out of their confusions, miseries and sins.” But this is only possible, argued Underhill, if we have “learned to look” at life with a “constant remembrance of the Eternal,” with the “unpossessive delight of worship”—“seeing” the “stuff of common life with the light shining through it.” ¹³²

Coda: Evelyn Underhill: an Anglican spiritual ecumenist

So, what can we learn from Underhill as a spiritual ecumenist? First, Underhill embraced the Spiritual Entente’s first principle of offering generous hospitality. Her retreat leading and spiritual direction were generously given to different branches of the Church while remaining loyal to her Anglican affiliation. Second, throughout her life, Underhill tried to hasten the coming of God’s Kingdom through encouraging spiritual union between all Christian believers. Central to this was her reliance on the Spirit and her lived understanding of the Church as both visible and the invisible Communion of Saints. Underhill lived out the passive side of bringing in the Kingdom—the ordering of our love (though sometimes had to gently drop her excessive self-critique). Third, Underhill participated in the active side of hastening the Kingdom, through sacrificially offering her time, money, giftings, prayer, and work. She was adamant that “soft comfiness” is the soul’s “worst enemy.” ¹³³ Fourth and perhaps most significantly, Underhill modeled for us generous listening, spiritual understanding, and diffused that spirit around her, rather than engaging in ignorant critique.

Underhill lived out what Allchin describes as a “profound sense of the unity of all Christians in Christ as something already given” and from that “starting-point,” she was able to “look out into the whole of humanity,” dependent on the “gift of the one Spirit,” thus her life became a “sign of the power of divine grace to break through the barriers created by human fear . . . ignorance and violence.” ¹³⁴

As early as 1928, Underhill discerned signs of “movement in the supernatural world,” a “profound union of Christendom” and believed that “visible reunion, when achieved,” would be the “flower of a seed sown long before in the fields of the Spirit,” “cherished in secret by a few.” ¹³⁵ The month before she died, Underhill wrote, “new life when it comes” “will not be the result of discussions, plans, meetings,” but will “well up from the deepest sources of prayer.” ¹³⁶ She died having seen growth in that seed, a “new fire” “kindling”—“various Christian bodies” drawing together, working together. Authentic unity could “only begin by union in prayer” then “spread to the surface,” like the Spiritual Entente. ¹³⁷

Coda

In 1940, Underhill told Spens that it is “only apparently when everything is reeling” that we begin to perceive God’s “over-ruling presence,” His “Majesty and Mercy”; a “deteriorating . . . earthly situation” “when the temporal outlook is darkest,” is when the “great swings back of the human spirit towards the Eternal have taken place.” ¹³⁸ Just as the Spiritual Entente and the Reunion Movement were particularly vibrant after our two World Wars, I have found myself wondering if our global pandemic, a “war” against an invisible enemy, coupled with the ecological disaster of Climate Change, might provide an opportunity for a new fervor in a global, ecumenical spirit of prayer—for a new “hope and vision,” invisible links spreading like leaven—a courageous participation in the hastening of the Kingdom. ¹³⁹

I close with one of Underhill’s prayers that vividly displays her posture as a spiritual ecumenist:

Look down in mercy upon Your Church militant upon earth, in all its branches and all its ministries. Stir up the heart of all who seek Your kingdom to greater faith and devotion. Draw them nearer to one another in mutual love in the joy of service and guide them back, we pray, to their lost unity, that the seamless robe may no more be torn, nor the body of Christ any more be broken . . . Make us worthy of the channels of Your grace and help us . . . show forth in our lives that we have been with You, that we live with You; Let us come to God, the Spirit, as to the flame and wind, with expectant faith, Amen. ¹⁴⁰