RENEWING REMEMBRANCE: TWENTY YEARS OF STUDYING

CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY

An Evening Panel Discussion

Friday, November 16, 2012, 7:30-9:30

Third Floor, Swift Hall, University of Chicago Divinity School

Welcome to everyone. I am Ann Astell of the University of Notre Dame. It is my privilege to serve as moderator of our panel discussion tonight. We have invited eight panelists: Douglas Burton-Christie (Loyola Marymount University);Lisa Dahill (Trinity Lutheran Seminary); Gilberto Cavazos-González, OFM (Catholic Theological Union); Bo Karen Lee (Princeton Theological Seminary); Bernard McGinn(University of Chicago Divinity School); Tim Hessel-Robinson (Brite Divinity School); Sandra Schneiders, IHM (Graduate Theological Union), and Philip Sheldrake (Cambridge Theological Federation). Our panelists represent different generations of membership in the Society, differing approaches to the study of Christian spirituality, and different Christian traditions. In preparation for tonight’s discussion, I have asked our panelists to read Philip Endean’s oft-reprinted essay, “Spirituality and the University” and then to prepare some responses to questions inspired by it. We hope that many of you have also had the opportunity to read or reread Endean’s essay, first published in 1995 in The Way and posted as a pdf document on the SSCS website. As it turns out, Philip Endean, SJ (Campion Hall, Oxford University) is with us tonight, thanks to a visiting position this semester at Boston College. Welcome, Philip! It’s great to have you with us.

Question 1: Doug and Philip, I want to address this first question to you. At the beginning and end of his essay, Endean links the loss of Christian culture, especially in the modern West, to the emerging scholarly interest in Christian spiritual experience as an object of study. For Endean, this linkage between cultural loss and academic emergence is simply a given. Does Endean’s description of the historical moment of Christian Spirituality studies ring true to you? If so, would you qualify it in any way? If not, would you want to offer an alternative hypothesis in answer to the questions: WHY has Christian spirituality emerged as an academic field and WHY NOW?

Question 2: Lisa and Gilberto, my second question is for you. Endean portrays the “modern academic students of spirituality” as “trying to overcome the separation between religious experience and intellectual reflection.” At the same time, however, he emphasizes that their “primary focus is cognitive.” Does a primarily cognitive account of religious experience run the risk of reinforcing the very separation it sets out to overcome? If so, how can and must scholars in the field guard themselves and their students against the danger of reducing spirituality to their cognitive understanding of it? Another way of framing the question might be to ask: what is the proper role of spiritual practice in the academic study of Christian spirituality?

Question 3: Endean notes among scholars of Christian spirituality a “significant consensus” that the religious experience of persons and communities can be a fruitful object of interdisciplinary study, but also a divergence in views about what actually constitutes religious experience. For those who closely associate religious experience with mysticism (narrowly defined), the study of Christian spirituality focuses on the individual’s transformative encounters with God, usually studied in the context of what precedes and follows from such encounters. For those who associate spiritual experience primarily with lived religion and its formative practices, the focus is on the religiously inflected pattern of everyday life,individual and communal, with its ordinary demands, ethical challenges, beliefs, and cultural expressions. The former understanding of experience takes its bearings from what is rare and unusual, the latter from what is repeated again and again.

My question to Doug, Sandra, and Bernie is this: is it important for any significant study of Christian spirituality (with the accent on Christian) to take both kinds of experience into account? If so, why and how? Does Christ make a difference in bridging these poles?

Question 4: Still on the theme of experience, Endean suggests that the modern academic study of Christian spirituality is marked by an expanded scope that takes into scholarly account the experiences of many different kinds of Christians—Catholic and Protestant, lay and religious, men and women, rich and poor; the experiences not just of Christians in the geographic regions closest to major Western universities, but also that of people living in countries all around the globe, in different language zones, in contact with other world religions. At issue is the Christian spirituality of groups and individuals whose diverse experience of God is partly conditioned by their specific cultural, economic, historical, gendered, ethnic, and professional experiences.

My question to Bo, Lisa,Tim, and Gilberto is this: How far are we from reflecting this expanded scope of inquiry? What are the biggest challenges, theoretical and practical? What is the significance (historical, theological, ethical, methodological, etc.) of such an expanded scope?

Question 5: The fifth set of questions is for Bo, Tim, and Philip. Many scholars of Christian Spirituality teach that subject at institutions with definite theological traditions and commitments. Do you agree with Endean’s observation that an openness to studying spiritual experience can “radically . . . change how [people] understand and appropriate their theological commitments”? If so, how is this potential to bring about a transformative change best to be viewed by theological schools—as a challenge, a worry, an opportunity for theological renewal?

Question 6:Philip Endean’s argument hinges on distinguishing within the broad field of Christianity studies two contrastive approaches: one more indebted in its methodology to Religious Studies, and the other more closely aligned with Theology. Since Endean names Sandra Schneiders and Bernard McGinn as spokespersons for these relatively distinct approaches, I want to ask Sandra and Bernie, first, whether you feel Endean has correctly characterized your position; and, second, whether your understanding of the disciplinary placement of Christian Spirituality as a field within the academy has changed in any way over the past twenty years?

Question 7: This is a final, rapid-fire question for everyone on the panel. Your answer should be one sentence in length! Near the end of his essay, Endean wonders whether in future years Christian Spirituality studies of the Religious Studies and Theological varieties will divorce, or amalgamate, or remain in dialogue Given the recent rise of studies of spirituality in many disciplines other than theology, what do you foresee for Christian Spirituality studies in the next ten years?