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Collected Essays of Maurice Creasey, 1912–2004: The Social Thought of a Quaker Thinker

interpret hesychasm as the quintessence of Orthodoxy and as the main feature that distinguishes the Orthodox East from modern Western civilisation. Johnson’s chapter 5, on the contrary, presents an entirely different picture: in the debates he documents, hesychasm is a controversial topic of discussion among Orthodox believers, converts to Christianity, Evangelicals, Perennialists, and those who are merely interested in meditative practices; it is detached from the cultural and theological frame of reference of Orthodox Christianity and turned into one religious practice among others, which is available to the modern spiritual seeker, just like Yoga, Zen or other meditative practices. Chapters 6 to 8 are dedicated to the tensions and theoretical challenges which arise from the modern, globalised situation of hesychasm. Under the headings ‘‘Authority’’, ‘‘Tradition’’, and ‘‘Appropriation’’, Johnson reflects on his findings in the light of contemporary theoretical debates in religious studies. He successfully presents hesychasm as a case that can advance these debates, because it brings to the fore key issues of: spiritual authority and subjectivised religious practice; tradition, constructivism, and detraditionalisation; and context-bound and decontextualised religious practice. In many of the modern accounts of the Jesus Prayer and hesychasm that Johnson has collected in his book, the practices are represented as forms of Christianity that compensate for the lack of contemplative or mystical traditions in Western Christianity. Hesychasm is seen as a Christian alternative to non-Christian Eastern spiritual traditions. At the same time, however, Johnson reminds readers that Eastern Orthodox authors have defended a robust sense of tradition, according to which hesychasm is inseparable from Orthodox theology and doctrine. The tension between the two attitudes—subjectivised religious practice that uses the Jesus Prayer, icons, and other ‘tools’ from the Orthodox tradition for an individual spiritual experience versus a confessionally bound and theologically grounded understanding of hesychasm—are characteristic of the globalised situation of hesychasm. Johnson’s study of The Globalization of Hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer has the great merit to foreground this tension and to demonstrate the contemporary relevance and dynamism of an ancient Orthodox Christian practice.