The Contemplative Struggle: Radical Discipleship in a Broken World
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
How do we embrace and work out our call to be disciples in a broken world? In The Contemplative Struggle Ian Cowley sets the central themes of the gospel of John alongside each other – abiding in Christ, conflict, light and darkness, obedience, loving one another – and explores how these can be reconciled in daily life. Drawing on his experience of living in his native South Africa during the apartheid era and challenging understandings of contemplative prayer and spirituality as essentially inward-looking, he highlights the urgent need for Christians to be active in bringing transformation to a suffering world and paints a compelling picture of radical discipleship for today.
‘Just as we are all meant to be contemplatives and to hear the voice of God in our lives, we are all meant to answer God’s call to be his partners in transfiguring the world. This calling, this encounter with God, is always to send us into the midst of human suffering.’
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- Paints a compelling picture of radical discipleship for today
- Highlights the urgent need for Christians to be active in bringing transformation to a suffering world
- Sets the central themes of the gospel of John alongside each other and explores how these can be reconciled in daily life
- The contemplative struggle
- Growing up
- The University Christian Movement
- Conflict and struggle
- In the wilderness
- The fire of love
- Christ in you, the hope of glory
- A war of desires
- Fire and rain
- Black consciousness and human liberation
- Tackling poverty and injustice
- The cost of living
- War and peace
- Slowing down in the age of speed
- A people of hope
Part I: The pearl of great price: seeking the kingdom of God
Part II:The eye of the needle: action and contemplation
Here is a much-needed book: the story of the battle against racism, injustice, poverty, held in tension with the necessity of time for contemplation. We need to hear it – there is much here that applies to our world today.
—Esther de Waal, writer and scholar
I do appreciate Ian Cowley’s interleaving of storytelling with spiritual reflection. It is good to have the story of UCM told to a wider audience than South Africa. Ian’s tribute to Steve Biko is welcome and true, and so is his account of white students’ struggle on the matter of conscription. His major concern with contemplation fits well into his account of this crucial time in the South African church struggle.
—John Davies, former bishop of Shrewsbury and one-time national chaplain of the Anglican Students’ Federation of South Africa
What an incredible book this is! I was deeply moved reading it. It is very inspiring and ignited a hope that we can be agents of change in this world. As someone who has known the value of contemplative prayer and practice in my own life, it felt like a gentle call back to that which I know and love, without being remotely judgemental. In fact, the whole book brings a wonderful balance of challenge without condemnation. I pray that all who read this book will examine afresh their response to the issues raised and explore the riches of contemplative prayer for themselves.
—Louise Rose, community projects manager, Fresh Hope Ministry, Stamford
- Title: Contemplative Struggle: Radical Discipleship in a Broken World
- Author: Ian Cowley
- Publisher: Bible Reading Fellowship
- Print Publication Date: 2021
- Pages: 160
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Reader Edition
- ISBNs: 9780857469823, 0857469827
- Resource ID: LLS:CNTMPLTVSTRWRLD
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-10-04T14:35:34Z
Ian Cowley is an Anglican priest who has served in parish ministry in Natal South Africa, Sheffield, Cambridge and Peterborough. From 2008 to 2016 he was Coordinator of Spirituality and Vocations in the Diocese of Salisbury, where he set up and developed the Contemplative Minister programme. He is the author of five books on spirituality, discipleship, and the local church. Some of his works include A People of Hope (Highland, 1993), Going Empty Handed (Monarch, 1996) and The Transformation Principle (Kingsway, 2002). To read Ian’s lockdown blog, ‘Wild times and the love of God’, click here.