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Protestant Mysticism: Pacifists and the "Practice of the Presence" Patricia Appelbaum* "I'm a mystic, but I'm a practical mystic." Anonymous source, "The Way of Contemplation," Peacemaker, July 20, 1953 In 1940 a "plan in the event of war or conscription," drafted by the prominent Christian pacifist A. J. Muste, advised pacifists to face the trials ofwartimewith"continualpractice ofthepresence ofGod."1 Muste was not alone: in the following year, a Civilian Public Service camp newsletter reported on a lecture by the Quaker Douglas Steere on "the techniques of silent meditation";2 an imprisoned conscientious objector quoted pacifist leader Muriel Lester on the joy of "practicing the presence";3 Jay Holmes Smith, Methodist organizer ofthe Harlem Ashram, spoke to the Episcopal Pacifist Fellowship on pacifist spiritual "training," also quoting Lester.4 A 1 942 pamphlet from the Fellowship of Reconciliation listed three devotional manuals: Trainingfor the Life ofthe Spirit by Gerald Heard, Ways of Prayingby Muriel Lester, andA Testament ofDevotion by Thomas Kelly.5 These books had in common a conviction that true religion was grounded in "mysticism"—direct, experiential contact with the divine—and that it manifested itselfin action. Indeed they appeared alongside titles typical of the pacifist activist interests ofthe early 1940s: Muste's Nonviolence in an Aggressive World, Harold Gray's Character "Bad", Harold Fey's Cooperatives andPeace, Allan Hunter's White Corpuscles in Europe. Similarly, in 1941 the Friends Book Store at Arch Street advertised Kelly's Testament alongside Hunter's Secretly Armed.6 Leigh Schmidt has recently explained the history ofliberal Protestants' pursuit ofmysticism andhow it "servedreligious liberals well."7 In so doing he cites the observations ofCharles Addison, Rufus Jones, and others that the leadership inthis movementwas more academic than spiritual. This may be something of an overstatement: even ifWilliam James looked from the outside in, Jones himself practiced meditation in the Quaker context and claimedto have hadunbidden experiences oftranscendence.8 Nevertheless, the observation holds true in the main. But at least one group ofliberal Protestants did try to practice mysticism. These were Protestant pacifists. Spiritual leaders offered written guides to mystical practice and accounts of their own experiences. Rank-and-file pacifists, too, left evidence of their efforts to practice mysticism and its meaning forthem. Like the nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century seekers * Patricia Applebaum is an independent scholar in Amherst, Massachusetts. Quaker History whom Schmidt describes, they favored intellectual and spiritual purity, athleticism, activism, and universalism, broadly construed as a desire to cross religious and social boundaries. Among Protestant pacifists, the growth ofmysticism coincided with the growth ofantimodernism.9 Between the world wars, the religious center of American public pacifism was not the sectarian "peace churches" but modernist mainline Protestantism. This modernism, with its confidence in progress, dominated the peace movement ofthe 1 920s. Butthe events ofthe 1930s challenged Protestants' optimism and, equally, challenged the churches' commitment to pacifism. Pacifists began to shift their attention from progress and reform to systemic alternatives. These included cooperative economics, subsistence farming, and folk arts, as well as Gandhian nonviolence and Hinduism. Interest in spiritual practice also increased.10 For instance, the prominent Disciples of Christ pacifist Kirby Page, who wrote prolifically during the 1920s on the politics and economics of war, began in 1932 to issue a series ofcollections ofspiritual exercises, meditations , and worship services.11 Protestant pacifists sought intense spiritual experience in concert with their intense ethical commitments. For these Protestants mysticism meant continuous direct communion with God. For some, this communion began in a single transformative experience; for others it required a willed effort to sustain meditation or prayer. Others had both kinds of experience. The practices they used were recollection, disciplined attention, and sometimes surrender, all drawing on physical as well as mental techniques. The results, pacifists claimed, were universal love, social action, andpeacemaking, but also strength, resistance, and protest. Students of twentieth-century Quakerism will know that liberal and silent-worship Friends have often identifiedthemselves as mystics andhave argued that authentic religion, mysticism, and activism are intimately connected.12 Liberal mysticism was not limited to Friends, however, nor did it originate solely in Quakerism. Mysticism was widely discussed among mainline Protestants. Both mainliners and Quakers turned to earlier Christian mystical sources...

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