Our 2024 Quiet Day leader Robyn Wrigley Carr will be the featured speaker at The 2025 James Lloyd Breck Conference on Monasticism and the Church, to be held at Nashotah House, June 18-20, 2025. The conference seeks to investigate Underhill’s mystical theology to discover how she understood the role of monasticism in the history and spirituality of the Church and how every Christian can be a single-minded mystic. Information and registration for this residential, in-person conference can be found here
EUA President Kathleen Staudt has published a comprehensive profile of Evelyn Underhill, her teachings and importance, on the website of the World Religions and Spirituality Project (WRSP). WRSP is a consortium of scholars working collaboratively to assemble and disseminate “information on alternate and emerging religious and spiritual groups around the world.” Kathy hopes this post will be a helpful starting point for those new to Underhill or seeking more resources about Underhill’s life and work.
The 22nd annual Evelyn Underhill Lecture on Christian Spirituality at Boston College, sponsored by the Center for the Study of Theology and Ministry, was delivered on March 23, 2024 by Professor Brian Robinette, who teaches in BC’s Theology Department. He spoke on Christian contemplative practice in polarized times.
Professor Jane Shaw lectured on Evelyn Underhll and her circle at Chichester Cathedral on March 13, 2024 as part of a series on Women and the Church of England in the Twentieth Century. She is Principal of Harris Manchester College, Professor of the History of Religion, and a Pro-Vice-Chancellor at the University of Oxford. She is at work on a book about modern mystics.
In his Charles Gore Lecture on a theology of monarchy and kingship as service, delivered just before the May 2023 coronation of King Charles III, the Rev. James Hawkey, canon theologian of Westminster Abbey, quoted Evenlyn Underhill: “God is the interesting thing about religion, and people are hungry for God.”
A 1951 letter from American poet Kenneth Rexroth to Derek Savage, pacifist, poet, and English literary and social critic, also former General Secretary of the Anglican Pacifist Fellowship from 1960 to 1962, was offered at auction recently and contained this passage: “Mysticism–Evelyn Underhill is still one of the best. Have you read the English mystics? Richard Rolle, Julian of Norwich, the Cloud of Unknowing, the Baroque mystics–St Teresa and St. John of the Cross…Do you know von Hugel’s book on Catherine of Genoa? It is very good…” The letter sold for 170 pounds.
The Rev. Lucy Foster, Eco-Church Officer for the North of England, is charged with transforming local churches into “a significant force in environmental care and restoration.” In an interview in Church Timesshe recalled, “My mum taught me to pray when I was very young. One of the prayers we prayed together was ‘Immanence’ by the Anglican mystic Evelyn Underhill: ‘I come in the little things, saith the Lord,’ and it’s stayed with me since then.” Underhill published Immanence: A Book of Verses in 1912.
