Is the William Carey Institute in Canada promoting contemplative spirituality? It appears the answer is yes. The Institute, located in Vancouver, BC, offers “creative learning experiences that equip church congregations and individual Christians in their ministry, personal development, and spiritual formation.” 1
The Institute’s Centre for Spiritual Formation is providing various contemplative experiences, including lectio divina, which will be offered in a spiritual formation seminar this summer. 2 David Benner will be the facilitator for the event. Benner’s book, Sacred Companions, openly promotes the teachings of panentheist Thomas Merton and atonement denier Alan Jones (Reimagining Christianity), Thomas Keating and a host of like-minded writers.
What’s more, in Benner’s book, he praises a book by John Gorsuch titled An Invitation to the Spiritual Journey. Benner says, “This little book sparkles.” In Gorsuch’s book, the general gist of it is how mysticism is uniting all the world’s religions. He makes specific reference to Swami Paramahansa Yogananda and comments that he was a great saint who brought many people to God. In the back of Gorsuch’s book there are also Tibetan Buddhist meditations. Gorsuch’s book proclaims the validity of all religions and also that God is in everything and everybody. For Benner to say this book sparkles, means he embraces its views – more importantly, not just in an intellectual sense but in a mystical sense.
Juliet Benner will be a speaker at the Carey Institute spiritual formation seminar also. Juliet is a spiritual director and a member of Spiritual Directors International. SDI is an interfaith association that promotes eastern-style mysticism and panentheism.
On the William Carey Institute website, it gives an endorsement by Basil Pennington for Benner: “Dr. Benner shares his lived experience in a way that opens for the reader the possibility of a true transformation.” But when Pennington says “transformation,” he is talking about a transformation of consciousness that takes place when one practices eastern-style meditation. Pennington states:
It is my sense, from having meditated with persons from many different [non-Christian] traditions, that in the silence we experience a deep unity. When we go beyond the portals of the rational mind into the experience, there is only one God to be experienced.(Centered Living, p. 192)
In Ray Yungen’s book, A Time of Departing, he discusses Pennington:
In the book Finding Grace at the Center [by Pennington and Thomas Keating], the following advice is given: “We should not hesitate to take the fruit of the age-old wisdom of the East and capture it for Christ. Indeed, those of us who are in ministry should make the necessary effort to acquaint ourselves with as many of these Eastern techniques as possible … Many Christians who take their prayer life seriously have been greatly helped by Yoga, Zen, TM and similar practices …” Thomas Keating and Basil Pennington have taken their Christianity and blended it with Eastern mysticism through a contemplative method they call centering prayer. (p. 64)
At the William Carey Institute seminar this summer, Benner will be using his book, Surrender to Love, in which he quotes and references several panentheist mystics.
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