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Captured by the Crucified

A Conference and Spiritual Life Workshop Celebrating Austin Farrer's

Lived Theology in the Centenary Year of His Birth

November 4-7, 2004

Conference and Workshop Schedule

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"Austin Farrer…possibly the greatest Anglican mind of the twentieth century." 

                                                                    --Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

Conference Portion

1:00 p.m., Thursday, November 4, 2004 - 5:00 p.m., Friday, November 5, 2004

THE PRACTICAL THEOLOGY OF AUSTIN FARRER AND FRIENDS

Special Guests:    The Rev. Dr. David Brown, van Mildert Professor of Divinity, University of Durham; and, Dr. Ann Loades, C.B.E., Professor Emerita of Divinity, University of Durham.

The conference presentations will begin at 1:00 p.m. on Thursday and will end on Friday afternoon.  They will explore the practical dimensions of Farrer’s theology and that of such friends as Dorothy L. Sayers, C. S. Lewis, and Charles Williams.

Workshop Portion

5:00 p.m., Friday, November 5, 2004 - Sunday morning, November 7, 2004

MEDITATIONS AND SPIRITUAL EXERCISES USING FARRER’S WORDS AND WORKS

Designer and Leader of Exercises:  The Rev. Kent Ira Groff, Adjunct Professor of Spiritual Development at Lancaster Seminary and Director of Oasis Ministries for Spiritual Development, Camp Hill, Pennsylvania.

This part of the conference aims to assist participants in deepening and strengthening their lives of faith.  It will combine meditations with exercises of reflection, discussion, the labyrinth, music, solitary prayer, and corporate worship.  This workshop on practicing faith in life assumes no familiarity with Farrer’s writings.

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Conference Planning Committee

Austin Farrer is one of an extraordinary group of mid-twentieth century “Oxford Christians,” although he is not as well known as some of the other more literary figures – such as C. S. Lewis, Dorothy L. Sayers, and J.R.R. Tolkien – he is nevertheless recognized as a brilliant figure in the recent history of British Christianity. Indeed, he has been called, perhaps with a touch of hyperbole, "the one genius that the Church of England . . . produced” in the last century and the “author of incomparably the most interesting theological books ever to come out of the Oxford Theology Faculty.” Part of his most lasting legacy–and the part which this conference and workshop will celebrate in the centennial year of his birth–is the practical spiritual direction into which his rigorous and faith-full theology was translated in sermons and books. A sampling of his words follows.

I do not know what the difference between ‘plain practical religion’ and theology is supposed to be. 

It is possible for God to live and act in our idea of God and our faith trusts God to do precisely this–to become in us an active, living truth. . . . When I pray, let my heart ask God to speak through my heart, that my prayer, continued by his inspiration, may become the answer to itself. 

We know on our knees.

O God, all that I tell you about yourself is empty and false, but what does it matter? You are no set of words, you are the living God. I do not grasp you, but you grasp me and will not let me go. You are here, or rather, you are that place where I am when I say that I am here. I am with you and you are yourself, and for what else would I care? I cannot think of you, but you can think in me, or keep silence in me; above all, you can love in me.

When you come before God, fix your eyes on God and on those for whom you pray. The more you look outwards, the more you will be yourself. For love is the substance of character, and love is self-forgetfulness.

We can . . . experience the active relation of a created energy to the Creator’s action by embracing the divine will. Everyone who prays knows that the object of the exercise is a thought or an aspiration or a caring which is no more ours than it is that of God in us. . . . We know that the action of a person can be the action of God in him or her; our religious existence is an experimenting with this relation. 

[Christ] takes us; he loves us for what we are, and loves us into what we must be; he takes us, incorporate with him through his death and resurrection, and gives us back ourself, that is himself, in the communion of bread and wine.

The beautiful rhythmic freedom of the dancers. . . . What a release and yet at the same time what a control! What a release and what a control; and the marvel of it is that the release and the control are one and the same thing. That is what releases you, something to dance to; but what is it that controls you? Why the very same thing; you dance to the music. The control is the release, the music lets you go, the music holds you.

Drums and tambourines are illuminating parables of true religion. For the whole mystery of practical religion comes down to that familiar phrase of our daily prayer, ‘whose serve is perfect freedom’. God our control and God our release. There is no end indeed to God’s making of a person. But God has not set the goal of the process in an imaginary future, where we cannot see it. He has set up the goal; it is revealed, it exists, the work has been finished in Christ. What never ends is our receiving the grace of Christ, our growing up into the image of Christ, until we see the face of Christ. [Christ] lifts us into fellowship with God, shares with us the Society which is the divine beatitude, and causes us to hang on the skirts of the divine eternity, to drink immortal joy forever.

My God and my All
My beginning and my end,
My sole and everlasting good,
My God and my All.

*Austin Farrer wrote before the advent of gender inclusive language. His words have been modified accordingly.

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