The Shock of the Old

As readers of this blog know, I continually try to make sense of why some Christians are hostile to centering prayer.

As best I can tell, there are three basic objections:

• It is seen as an innovation within Christian spirituality, a “new age” practice without historical precedent or grounding. A variation of this objection is that centering prayer is unscriptural; i.e. it is not found in the Bible.
• It is seen as representing the influx of alien ideas or practices, particularly eastern forms of spirituality (an idea that no doubt was accelerated by the fact that early writings on centering prayer did borrow language and terminology freely from the east, comparing the practice to transcendental meditation and referring to the prayer word as a mantra).
• It is seen as dangerous because an emptied mind is seen as vulnerable to attack from evil spirits.

If anyone reading this knows of other reasons why some Christians reject centering prayer, please post your thoughts as a comment here. I’m quite interested in the topic, even though it does make my blood boil (yes, evidence of my own spiritual poverty, but that’s a topic for another day).

For now, we’ll just go with these three concerns. I’m hardly a professional theologian or church historian, but based on my layman’s knowledge all three of these objections strike me as being based on misunderstandings.