Christopher D.L. Johnson is Instructor of Religious Studies at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, USA.
The tension between the two attitudes- subjectivised religious practice that uses the Jesus Prayer, icons, and other 'tools' from the Orthodox tradition for an individual spiritual experience versus a confessionally bound and theologically grounded understanding of hesychasm- are characteristic of the globalised situation of hesychasm. Johnson's study of The Globalization of Hesychasm and the Jesus Prayer has the great merit to foreground this tension and to demonstrate the contemporary relevance and dynamism of an ancient Orthodox Christian practice. -- Journal of Contemporary Religion, Vol. 27, No. 1