Thomas Merton Speaks Across the Decades

Introduction by Dr Michael Hahn
Programme Leader for the MA in Christian Spirituality Programmes

Thomas Merton stands as one of the spiritual giants of the 20th century and is drawn upon heavily in a range of traditions today.

At Sarum College, Merton is studied in a range of contexts, including in a recent iteration of our webinar series on Modern Mystics and in the MA in Christian Spirituality’s module Modern and Postmodern Perspectives on Christian Spirituality. As part of that module, first-year MA student Sally Shaw reviewed a 2023 book about Merton and how we can retrieve his voice for important conversations. The author is Daniel Horan, who has taught for Sarum previously, and we are pleased to present Sally’s review below.

===========================================================================================

Daniel P. Horan. Engaging Thomas Merton – Spirituality, Justice and Racism. New York: Orbis Books, 2023.

Review by Dr Sally Shaw

Engaging Thomas Merton (2023) is a monograph by the American Franciscan friar and professor of theology, Daniel Horan. The book consists of a collection of Horan’s essays about Thomas Merton, which are reproduced or adapted from Horan’s ‘lectures, columns, conference papers, book chapters and [academic] journal articles’ (p. 249). Both the varied subject matter covered in Horan’s book (ranging from topics such as the digital world, critical race theory and reflections on postmodern theology) and the diversity of Horan’s original intended audience for each essay (including among others, attendees at academic conferences, priests, and lay readers of popular Catholic publications) mean that Engaging Thomas Merton necessarily has to tread the fine line between eclecticism and overarching academic coherence.

Prophetically, Merton identified ‘racism as a white problem’ arguably a notion only recently explored in Critical Race Theory

At the heart of all of the essays is Horan’s compelling argument that Thomas Merton should not be regarded merely as a historical figure who died in 1968; rather his prophetic vision and liminal societal position allow Merton to speak clearly ‘across the decades’ into our postmodern world – one that is increasingly riven with social and spiritual alienation, rampant individualism and a loss of humanity (p. ix). Horan’s book is divided into five sections, each containing three or four essays (Significance of Thomas Merton, Contemporary Christian Life, Key Christian Virtues, Racial Justice, Social Justice and Ethics). This structure helps the reader to logically navigate their way through Horan’s critique of Merton’s complex thought, whilst allowing for a degree of necessary overlap in subject matter.

A key strength of Engaging Thomas Merton is the breadth of topics covered and relatedly, Horan’s far-reaching but accessible exploration of Merton’s prolific writings across a wide range of genres (including his letters, articles, monographs, private journals, sermons, literary criticism and poems). This is particularly useful to readers new to Merton’s work; indeed, it is Horan’s stated aim that the book should expose young people to Merton (p. 14). Horan argues convincingly that Merton’s relatively short life was lived out in a series of spiritual and intellectual ‘conversions’ (p. 5) and as such, does not shy away from the contradictions and inner conflicts inherent in Merton’s thought. Merton was a Trappist monk who lived in a hermitage but increasingly sought a voice and place in the wider world (p. 133); a contemplative desirous of a ‘simple, prayerful’ life who nonetheless constantly struggled with worldly ‘ego and ambition’ (p. 14); a pacifist who initially supported the ‘Christian non-violence’ of Martin Luther King only to become sympathetic to (whilst not explicitly condoning) Malcolm X’s call of racial justice ‘by any means necessary’ (pp. 230-230). Horan uses these examples and others to make the compelling argument that as ‘someone whose whole humanity […] is on display,’ Merton helps us to recognise our own spiritual struggles and weaknesses (p.7). Moreover, as Horan argues in the essay Kyrie Eleison, it is Merton’s humanity, prayer life and ‘engagement with the signs of the time’ that enables him to formulate a theology which is predicated on God’s mercy (and, as with so much of Merton’s writing, anticipates Vatican II): ‘The way God reveals God’s self to us is by means of showing us mercy and showing us how then to love one another in precisely this manner’ (p. 98).

As is inevitably the case with such an ambitious range of essays and themes, some are perhaps more compelling than others. Section IV, The Spirituality of Racial Justice is a particular strength of the book. As Horan writes, Merton’s engagement with contemporaneous ‘political, intellectual and […] social movements’ – his oft-called ‘turn to the world’ – began the end of the 1950s (p. 23). In practical terms, this meant that Merton embarked on what he himself termed as ‘an apostolate of friendship’ –correspondence (written while he remained a cloistered monk) with a wide range of people including contemporaneous writers, social and political activists, and theologians (p. 24). Horan asserts that through Merton’s ongoing correspondence, his work with ‘Christian non-violence movements’, and his engagement with writers such as James Baldwin, Martin Luther King and W.E.B. Du Bois, he became increasingly aware of the complex nature of racism and sympathetic to the burgeoning civil rights movement (p.152). Horan skillfully demonstrates that Merton’s subsequent antiracist writings (many of which were censored by the American Catholic Church) were decades ahead of their time insofar as he clearly identified what we would now term as institutional or structural racism (p.178). In other words, racism was not an ‘individual problem’ rather it was built into the very fabric of American society – useful and ‘natural’ to white people in positions of power – ‘unjust and violent’ to the subordinate black and minority populations (p.178). Prophetically, Merton identified ‘racism as a white problem’ arguably a notion only recently explored in Critical Race Theory (p.180). Merton’s calling to account the Christian church as complicit in racism (p.192) should also give the reader pause for thought; as A.D.A France-William’s 2020 book, Ghost Ship: Institutional Racism and the Church of England, reveals, such issues sadly remain over fifty years on from Merton’s death.

Equally relevant is Horan’s essay Digital Natives and the Digital Self in which he draws on Merton’s deep concerns about the spiritually alienating nature of technological progress (Merton was wise enough to observe that technology itself is neutral; it is how we use it that is the problem) and applies this to the notion of an increasingly atomised and ‘disembodied’ inauthentic self (p. 59). Horan uses Merton to ask how we can ‘locate the reality of our true identity in God’ when we are bent on false identity formation predicated on the vagaries of the digital world.

Perhaps slightly less convincing is Horan’s chapter on marriage. Whilst he interestingly argues that Merton anticipated Vatican II insofar as he rejected the Augustinian view of marriage as a ‘necessary refuge from sin’ in favour of the then-radical notion that ‘Christian spouses could live out their spiritual vocation’ it seems fair to assert that few Christians would question this now (p. 47). Moreover, there is no mention of the Church’s stance on same-sex marriage; Merton with his humanity and concern for those ‘on the margins’ would doubtless have something to say about this current injustice.

At a bleak point in history where at an institutional level desperate refugees are bartered with other states as mere ‘quotas’, where homelessness is referred to as a ‘lifestyle choice’, and violent global conflict is regarded as inevitable, Horan’s book is timely both for Merton scholars and undergraduates. We would do well to reflect on Merton’s message of mercy, authenticity and humanity; Engaging Thomas Merton is a very good place to begin these reflections.