In Christianity Today Promoting The Cult of Richard Foster at Apprising Ministries we point out that the current September 2008 issue of CT features an interview embracing Living Spiritual Teacher and Quaker mystic Richard Foster as a teacher of proper Christian spirituality. As you’ll also see in Spiritual Formation: Just Say No, with an able assist from Foster’s spiritual twin Dallas Willard and the postliberal cult of the  Emergent Church, under that guise neopagan so-called “spiritual disciplines” have now slithered into the heart of evangelicalism. 

But the the truth is that the core practice of this Contemplative Spirituality/Mysticism (CSM), which is Contemplative/Centering Prayer, is actually a type of meditation that’s virtually identical to that practiced in Eastern religions such as Zen Buddhism and the transcendental meditation of Hinduism. And yet this kind of spurious spiritual formation, so-called “Christian” mysticism, which really developed in the antibiblical monastic traditions of apostate Roman Catholicism is now showing up in more and more evangelical youth groups.

Below we show you from John Calvin, one the leaders of the Protestant Reformation, what he thought about what’s been revived by Richard Foster in these so-called spiritual disciplines of Spiritual Formation, which is really simply a reimagined form of semi-pelagian pietism. From The Institutes, book IV, Chapter 13:

17. Monastic vows, especially the vow of chastity

Now, then, let us see the nature of the vows by which the monks of the present day are initiated into this famous order.

First, as their intention is to institute a new and fictitious worship with a view to gain favour with God, I conclude from what has been said above, that every thing which they vow is abomination to God.

Secondly, I hold that as they frame their own mode of life at pleasure, without any regard to the calling of God, or to his. approbation, the attempt is rash and unlawful; because their conscience has no ground on which it can support itself before God; and “whatsoever is not of faith is sin,” (Rom. 14: 23.)

Moreover, I maintain that in astricting themselves to many perverse and impious modes of worship, such as are exhibited in modern monasticism, they consecrate themselves not to God but to the devil. For why should the prophets have been permitted to say that the Israelites sacrificed their sons to devils and not to God, (Deut. 32: 17; Ps. 106: 37,) merely because they had corrupted the true worship of God by profane ceremonies; and we not be permitted to say the same thing of monks who, along with the cowl, cover themselves with the net of a thousand impious superstitions?