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On Contemplative Prayer

Are contemplative practices like centering prayer and lectio divina a rich retrieval of Christian tradition — or a dangerous import of mystical techniques incompatible with evangelical theology?

Last updated: April 17, 2026

TL;DR

Evangelicals are divided on contemplative prayer. Some view practices like centering prayer and lectio divina as biblical expressions of communion with God, rooted in Christian tradition. Others consider them spiritually dangerous imports from Eastern mysticism that undermine Scripture's sufficiency and promote passive, experience-centered spirituality incompatible with Reformed theology.

In recent decades, evangelical churches have rediscovered contemplative prayer practices: centering prayer, lectio divina, the prayer of examen, Christian meditation. Advocates see these as a retrieval of the church's rich mystical heritage, offering spiritual depth and slowness in an age of distraction and activism. Critics worry they represent an importation of Eastern mysticism into Christian spirituality, a subtle dilution of the sufficiency of Scripture, and a shift from petition and intercessory prayer toward mystical experience. The debate touches core evangelical convictions about the nature of prayer, the authority of Scripture, the role of human experience in faith, and what constitutes authentic Christian spiritual practice. It also reveals generational differences: younger evangelicals often embrace contemplative prayer as resistance to evangelical pragmatism, while older evangelicals warn against its dangers.

What makes the debate particularly interesting is that both advocates and critics claim fidelity to evangelical theology and to Scripture. Both value prayer, the presence of God, and spiritual transformation. They disagree about whether contemplative practices — which involve quieting the mind, listening rather than speaking, and waiting in God's presence — represent a legitimate recovery of Christian tradition or an alien methodology that undermines evangelical approaches to prayer. The question is not whether evangelicals should pray, but what prayer looks like, what its purpose is, and whether methods matter. These are not trivial questions, yet neither should they divide the church if both parties can maintain intellectual humility and genuine respect.

Key Questions This Topic Addresses

  • What is the difference between petitionary prayer and contemplative prayer, and are both biblically legitimate?
  • Do contemplative practices like centering prayer represent Christian mysticism or eastern meditation repackaged?
  • How should we evaluate spiritual practices that come from Catholic or Orthodox traditions? Is the source a problem?
  • Can evangelicals practice contemplative prayer while maintaining belief in the sufficiency of Scripture?
  • What is the proper relationship between doing (activism, evangelism, service) and being (contemplation, listening, presence)?

The Evangelical Debate

Three Evangelical Assessments of Contemplative Prayer

Evangelical theology includes three distinct approaches to contemplative prayer, each grounded in different assessments of church tradition, the nature of prayer, and the proper balance between biblical revelation and contemplative experience.

Position 1
Cautious or Critical Cessation
John MacArthur · Joni Eareckson Tada · R.C. Sproul · Richard Foster (in some respects)
Contemplative prayer is a borrowed practice from Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy that introduces Eastern meditation techniques into Christian spirituality under a new name. Centering prayer's instruction to empty the mind and wait for God's wordless presence is not biblical; Jesus teaches prayer as speaking to the Father, making requests, and receiving answers. The focus on contemplative experience risks making prayer about human experience rather than God's revealed Word. Evangelicals should recover biblical prayer — praise, confession, petition, intercession — and resist the temptation to adopt practices that, however well-intentioned, veer toward mysticism and away from Scripture's sufficiency and clarity.
Key Reads
10 Key Bible Verses on Spiritual Discipline What Is Meditation?
Position 2
Enthusiastic Adoption and Integration
Cynthia Bourgeault · Brian Taylor · Ruth Haley Barton · Parker Palmer
Contemplative prayer represents a recovery of the church's neglected mystical heritage and a necessary antidote to evangelical pragmatism and activism. The desert fathers, medieval mystics, and contemplative traditions preserved crucial wisdom about listening to God, deepening union with Christ, and spiritual transformation. Centering prayer, lectio divina, and contemplative practices are not mystical departures from Scripture but ways of encountering God more deeply through silence and receptivity. Evangelicals' suspicion of experience and emphasis on rational knowledge have produced spiritually thin churches. Contemplative practices reconnect us to the depths of Christian tradition and to God's presence beyond mere propositions.
Key Reads
Invitation to a Deeper Conversation The Contemplative Life
Position 3
Evangelical Integration with Caution
Dallas Willard · Timothy Keller · Eugene Peterson · Tremper Longman
Contemplative prayer practices can be practiced by evangelicals, but they must be transformed and interpreted through explicitly Christian and biblical frameworks. Lectio divina — praying Scripture — is thoroughly biblical; centering prayer requires caution because its origins and mechanisms are less clearly rooted in Scripture. Evangelicals can practice silence, listening, and receptivity without abandoning conviction that God has spoken most fully in Christ and Scripture. The real question is not whether to be contemplative but how: We need both petition and listening, both doing and being, both theological clarity and mystical depth. This requires careful integration, biblical discernment, and resistance to adopting practices wholesale from traditions whose theological convictions differ from ours.
Key Reads
Prayer: Finding the Heart's True Home Practicing the Presence of God

What the Conversation Adds Up To

The contemplative prayer debate reveals that evangelicals need not choose between Scripture's sufficiency and mystical depth. God speaks, but He also reveals Himself through silence and presence. Prayer involves both speaking and listening. The Christian life includes both activism and contemplation, both intellectual knowledge and experiential encounter. The deepest evangelical voices refuse the false binary: We do not have to abandon biblical conviction or evangelical identity to practice silence, lectio divina, or contemplative waiting on God. The question is whether we can do so within explicitly Christian frameworks, with biblical literacy, and with caution about practices whose origins and mechanisms we do not fully understand.

What matters most is that evangelical churches are not content with activism divorced from prayer, knowledge without transformation, or activism without listening to God's voice. Whether a particular congregation practices centering prayer or not, all should cultivate both petition and listening, both doing and contemplation. The healthiest evangelical approach may be to encourage practices like lectio divina (Bible-based contemplation) while remaining cautious about techniques borrowed wholesale from non-Christian traditions. God's goal is not correct prayer technique but transformed disciples who encounter Him, know His word, and are conformed to Christ — and those goods can be pursued through various methods if all are rooted in Scripture and submission to Christ.

The Evangelical Conversation, Curated

1
An FAQ on Mysticism and the Christian Life
Justin Taylor · The Gospel Coalition
Taylor starts with definitions, using D. D. Martin’s description of Christian mysticism as the pursuit of “experienced, direct, nonabstract, unmediated” knowledge of God, and walks through each term. He then names the main figures, from Pseudo-Dionysius and The Cloud of Unknowing to Teresa of Ávila, John of the Cross, Merton, Nouwen and Richard Foster, and lays out the classic stages of the mystical way. He closes by measuring the tradition against a biblical spirituality that runs through Scripture and the ordinary means of grace.
2
Defining The Contemplative Tradition: The Prayer-Filled Life
Richard J. Foster · Renovaré
Foster, the author of Celebration of Discipline, defines the contemplative life as “the steady gaze of the soul upon the God who loves us.” Drawing heavily on John of the Cross and Teresa of Ávila, he describes its movements: a love for God that comes as a gift, a peace that is a Presence, delight, and also seasons of emptiness, dryness and the hiddenness of God. It is the sympathetic case for the contemplative stream, in the words of its best-known evangelical advocate.
3
Why Should Thoughtful Evangelicals Read the Medieval Mystics?
Carl Trueman · Themelios
Trueman, a Reformed church historian, argues that evangelicals should read Bonaventure, Hildegard, Julian of Norwich and Aquinas, while warning against the modern habit of treating mystical experience as prior to doctrine. The medieval mystics, he notes, grounded their writing in Scripture and theology. Their apophatic “negative theology” also sits closer to orthodox language about God (infinite, simple, immutable) than many conservatives realize.
4
The Right Kind of Mysticism
Jared C. Wilson · The Gospel Coalition
Wilson pushes back on heresy hunters who condemn every evangelical who uses the word “contemplative.” He also distinguishes Psalm 1:2 meditation from Eastern-style techniques that are “more contemplative than prayer.” His guardrail is content: Christians contemplate God’s holiness and his inerrant Word, not a vague numinous or the depths of their own consciousness. He ends by preferring Puritan mysticism to its Roman Catholic and progressive versions.
5
Keller on Quiet Times, Mysticism, and the Priceless Payoff of Prayer
Matt Smethurst · The Gospel Coalition
In this interview about his book Prayer, Tim Keller argues for a “radically biblical mysticism” in the line of John Owen and Jonathan Edwards. He describes meditation as thinking out, working in and praying up your theology. He says the Luther–Owen pattern of meditating on Scripture until the heart is engaged fits neither the typical evangelical quiet time nor the new enthusiasm for lectio divina. He is explicit that biblical meditation is not a contemplative practice aimed at getting beyond words and rational thought.
6
5 Steps to Help You Practice Meditation
Matthew C. Bingham · Crossway
Adapted from A Heart Aflame for God, this piece argues that evangelicals have largely lost the Puritan practice of meditation, and that a distracted, sped-up culture is the poorer for it. Bingham collects the recurring Puritan advice: tie meditation to Scripture reading and prayer, practice both “set” and “sudden” meditation, slow down your reading to compare text with text, and press each truth home in application until “thy heart grow warm.”
7
What Is Meditation?
Kim Riddlebarger · Ligonier Ministries
Riddlebarger contrasts Eastern meditation, which empties the mind and turns inward, with Christian meditation, which looks outside the self to a personal Creator-Redeemer revealed in creation and Scripture. Because the human heart is dark, he argues, turning within is the wrong direction. Biblical meditation, modeled in Psalm 1, fills the mind with God’s Word and is not tied to any posture or to seeking altered states of consciousness.
8
Scriptural Meditation Promises Something Better than Zen
Jen Wilkin · Christianity Today
Wilkin wants to rescue the word “meditation” from the lotus-position caricature without giving it over to mystical emptiness. Working from Psalm 1, she argues that the object of Christian meditation is the whole of Scripture: God’s law, promises, works and ways. Its illumination comes through patient repetition and reflection, not through quieting the mind into silence.
9
Should We Really Call It a ‘Quiet’ Time?
David Powlison · CCEF
Powlison counted the vocal cues in the Psalms and found that more than 95% portray or invite audible words to God, so he suggests that a “noisy time” would be the more accurate name. He grants that silent prayer has a place (Hannah, Nehemiah) but argues that even subvocal prayer is essentially verbal, because prayer is talking with another Person. It is a useful counterweight to forms of spirituality that make wordless silence the goal.
10
We Need the Church to Face the Quiet
Justin Ariel Bailey · Christianity Today
Bailey reviews John Mark Comer’s Into the Quiet, which tries to translate the desert fathers’ practice of solitude and silence for urban Christians. He traces Comer’s three encounters in the quiet, with ourselves, with the enemy and with God, and credits him with insisting that the goal is to “encounter God in love,” not calmer nerves. He gives Comer good marks on avoiding elitism and legalism, while asking for more on the local church.
11
The Problem with Comer’s Cafeteria Approach to Spirituality
Matthew Bingham · The Gospel Coalition
Bingham gives a Reformed critique of Comer’s Practicing the Way. He argues that it largely leaves out regeneration and union with Christ and treats Scripture as one practice among many rather than the means by which we commune with God. He also says it mixes Catholic, Orthodox and Quaker “spiritual masters” without acknowledging their real disagreements. It is a clear statement of why many Reformed evangelicals are uneasy with the current revival of contemplative practices.