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 HesselRobinson (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?