{"id":1602,"date":"2008-10-11T10:04:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-11T10:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=1602"},"modified":"2019-11-22T16:54:40","modified_gmt":"2019-11-22T16:54:40","slug":"five-influences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/?p=1602","title":{"rendered":"Five influences"},"content":{"rendered":"

As tagged by Steve<\/a>, I need “to list five people, living or dead, who influenced my spiritual path in a positive way.” I’ll ignore family in this and, like Steve, include someone I only know from their writings.<\/p>\n

1. David Dixon, a teacher when I was at sixth form, also a lay reader in the CofE, who first made me question my atheism;
2. Trevor Williams<\/a>, chaplain at my Oxford College, who really did the dismantling and helped me to feel intellectually comfortable with the faith;
3. Brother Bernard SSF<\/a>, who was my spiritual director for many years and really sorted me out and set me on the right path;
4. Wittgenstein<\/a> – understanding him allowed my rational and faith sides to integrate more or less successfully; and
5. The various evangelicals in the Mersea benefice (it would be invidious to pick out only one) as I have definitely ‘broadened out’ in my theology since arriving here. I don’t think I’ve abandoned anything I previously believed – I’m still basically an Anglo-Catholic sacramentalist – but I’m much more comfortable with evangelical language than I ever expected to be. And that’s a good thing.<\/p>\n

I tag: Jon<\/a>, Paul<\/a>, Philip<\/a>, Tom<\/a>, Joe<\/a>, Byron<\/a>, John<\/a>, Tim A<\/a>, Tim C<\/a> and Tim G<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As tagged by Steve, I need “to list five people, living or dead, who influenced my spiritual path in a positive way.” I’ll ignore family in this and, like Steve, include someone I only know from their writings. 1. David … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[25,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-autobiography","category-church"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3npsc-pQ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1602"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1602\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6452,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1602\/revisions\/6452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elizaphanian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}