Dear Editor,
Having great respect for Julia Cameron, I tried not to read her too quickly before I commented (‘Evangelical History’, en December 2024) I also knew Timothy Dudley-Smith – he was one of my bishops when I was a curate. In the 1970s and afterward, I read the CPAS magazine Together, and used the Falcon publications and the Good News Bible. So I hope I don’t need Bob Dylan’s warning: ‘Don’t criticise what you don’t understand’.
I take Julia’s main point, which is well made, as one would expect. Spiritual renewal there certainly was, but also some glib talk about ‘revival’. I remember it well – and have a long memory!
I have only a little to add to my claims of ‘shallowness and flippancy’. One of the gentlemen whom Julia commends visited my church in Oxford. He got half the congregation to sing ‘la, la, la ...’ and the others ‘pom, pom, pom ...’ while he rendered a Presley-type croon and played his guitar.
Reviewing Psalm Praise in Crusade magazine (to which I subscribed) Mary Endersbee commented that one of the Psalm settings was ‘reminiscent of Topol’ (Fiddler On The Roof for those who remember!) If that is spiritual renewal, count me out. I’m quite sure that nothing of this kind happened in Julia’s churches (I’ve worshipped in one of them).
Yours sincerely,
Roger Curl, Weybourne
