Fellow, SCAS.
Professor of the History of Religion, University of Oxford

ABSTRACT:
This talk will explore why and how the mystics, especially (but not only) the medieval Christian mystics, were revived in the early twentieth century. Why did writers, artists, pacifists, political reformers and anti-imperialists find the mystics such compelling guides in their search for a meaningful life? This talk explores some of these figures – both the modern revivers and the mystics they revived – and situates this movement in the broader trends of the time. It will show how, when institutional religion was declining, a search for a more authentic ‘spirituality’ – promising a direct relationship with the divine - was on the rise. It will also argue that being ‘spiritual but not religious’ was initially an early twentieth-century phenomenon rather than a product of the 1960s, as usually thought.