Contemplative Prayer with Ray Yungen

By Ray Yungen

There is a practice that is becoming more and more popular within the evangelical church. It is called contemplative prayer or centering prayer. Youth organizations and seminaries are particularly drawn to this, thus impacting the Christian youth in this country. Furthermore, there is a snowballing effect wherein contemplative prayer is being accepted and endorsed by more and more evangelical leaders, often based not on their own experience and understanding but rather on the word of other respected leaders who in turn may not have fully researched this subject. I would like to address four points, each with quotes from various published works.

A Distinct Connection Between New Age, Eastern Religion, and the Occult, and Contemplative Prayer.

First of all, New Agers, occultists and those practicing Eastern religion regard contemplative prayer as part of their own movement. The following excerpts are all from New Age, Eastern thought and occultic books and magazines:

· “Those who have practiced Transcendental Meditation may be surprised to learn that Christianity has its own time-honored form of mantra meditation. The technique, called Centering Prayer, draws on the spiritual exercises of the Desert Fathers, the English devotional classic, The Cloud of Unknowing, and the famous Jesus Prayer …” “Reliance on a mantric centering device has a long history in the mystical canon of Christianity.”

Video Credit: The Sanctuary

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