Chapter One - Evelyn Underhill (1875–1941): Mysticism and Worship

Summary

Evelyn Underhill's remarkable book Mysticism (1911) went through many editions and revisions during her own lifetime, and has rarely been out of print since. This book was the work of a pioneer in the field and is still acknowledged as such. It is also worth noting that terminology has shifted over the years: use of the term ‘spirituality’ has now largely superseded such terms as ascetical/mystical/spiritual theology. Thus most of Underhill's writing as a whole is still much valued as ‘spirituality’ (relation to the transcendent). She is not simply to be written off as if she were of importance only in her own era, before World War II in effect (she died in 1941), though some of the conclusions she drew from her studies would not necessarily be palatable to her present-day readers, as we shall see. Moreover, given that ‘spirituality’ has in the last quarter century or so been developing into a major academic discipline and that it is, so to speak, being reconnected to academic theology, we may hope that there will be renewed attention to the whole range of her work. However, it will no doubt be some time before academic theology fully embraces what is now called ‘liturgical’ or ‘pastoral’ theology of the kind that she herself attempted – also within the broad compass of ‘spirituality’. She was nothing if not ambitious both in the range of topics she tackled and in some of her theological proposals. The reason for choosing my particular focus is precisely the audacity of her convictions. A more comprehensive study of her writing as a whole would require a major book.

Evelyn Underhill and Her Context

Born in December 1875, Evelyn Underhill was a Victorian, but one fortunate enough to benefit from some of the most significant changes in the Victorian and then the Edwardian era, which affected the lives of women and, inevitably, their relationship with men. Put briefly, in England, the Matrimonial Causes Act of 1857, and its development in legislation of 1867 and 1870, had at last done something to rectify the situation of married women, deemed hitherto to have no legal existence and no legal rights of property ownership. In 1885, the Married Women's Property Act secured to married women the property and earnings they had acquired after marriage.