Evelyn Underhill

Evelyn Underhill

Evelyn Underhill (born December 6, 1875 in Wolverhampton , Staffordshire , England, † June 15, 1941 in London ) was an Anglo-Catholic mystic and theologian . The Anglican Church of England and the Episcopalian Church of the USA honor her in their calendars of saints under the date of June 15. Underhill kept her single name even after she married Hubert Stuart-Moore in 1907.

Life and meaning

Not least under pressure from her radically anti-Catholic spouse, Evelyn Underhill remained lifelong loyal to her Anglican denomination and church membership ( High Church ) despite her growing affection for Catholicism . In her research on mysticism , however, she also pursued Eastern Orthodox, Protestant and non-church forms of mysticism with the same interest. There she deals with - well differentiated - the history, systematics and practice of mysticism and works on a very similar corpus of sources as Helena Petrovna Blavatsky , whose name she does not mention. In addition, through Friedrich von Hügel and Rudolf Eucken , she found a way of working and designing scientifically. From 1929 to 1932 she was the theological editor for the English newspaper The Spectator .

Friedrich Heiler placed them next to Baron von Hügel and above Albrecht Ritschl , Wilhelm Herrmann , Adolf von Harnack . The Encyclopedia Britannica (1987) pays tribute to her development: “By 1940 she had supplemented her earlier and more diffuse mystical attitudes with a greater understanding and acceptance of institutional and sacramental elements in traditional Christianity, and she had come to center her theology on an experience of Christian."

Fonts

• Mysticism. 1911. 2nd Edition 1930. E-Text , German: Mystik. A study of the nature and development of religious consciousness in humans. With an afterword by Friedrich Heiler. 1928
• The Mystic Way. A psychological study of Christian origins (1914). On-line
• Immanence. 1913 (poems)
• The Mystics of the Church. London 1926.

literature

• MB Cropper: Evelyn Underhill (1958)
• Dana Greene: Evelyn Underhill (1990)