Professor Gordon Lynch, of Birkbeck College, in his recent book, The New Spirituality: An introduction to progressive belief in the Twenty-First Century characterises “the new spirituality” as featuring the need for:
• A credible religion for a modern age;
• Religion which is truly liberating and beneficial for women;
• Connection between religion and scientific knowledge; and
• A spirituality that can respond to the impending ecological crisis.
Makes a change from recent writings about fundamentalism and the 'religious right'!
In an article with the above title in The Tablet of 26th April - I have been doing some catching up: oh! the joys of retirement! - the Abbot of Worth talks about our having to learn how to explain our faith in cultural terms that modern spiritual seekers - and there are very many of these who never attend any church - can understand. “This,” he says, “is dialogue and evangelisation, in which the Christian both learns and teaches at the same time… What the whole Church offers to spiritual seekers is beauty and peace. With great credibility we can offer the beauty of our worship and the peace that comes from living justly.”
The photograph? I took it in Minerve, in the Languedoc on 31st December 2000: "La Colombe de lumière" - Jean-Luc Severac's monument, carved in 1982, to the 140 Cathars, burnt at the stake there on 22nd July 1210 upon the orders of Simon de Montfort.
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