Spirituality Confronts its Future

We all know the story of the unhappy prophet Amos, plucked from his herds in the land of Judah to proclaim Yahweh's dire threats against Israel and its king Jeroboam. When taken to task by the priest Amaziah and told to go back to where he came from, Amos wailed: "I am no prophet, nor a prophet's son, but I am a herdsman and a dresser of sycamore trees, and the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, 'Go, prophesy to my people Israel'" (Amos 7:14-15).

I too feel compelled to do something that is not exactly what I am used to, namely, tending my customary historical herds and dressing manuscripts for the Classics of Western Spirituality (CWS) Series. However, the circumstances of this twenty-fifth anniversary of the CWS Series invite us to reflect not only on the future of the series itself, but also on the ambiguous situation of spirituality at the dawn of the third millennium. I use the term "ambiguous" to indicate that the explosion of the use of the word spirituality in recent decades has potentiality both for good and for ill.² While we can welcome many aspects of the revival of spiritual traditions across the globe, and while even vague uses of the term point to the desire of many to find some deeper dimension in their lives, it would be an abdication of responsibility, or at least a sign of considerable schizophrenia, to think that everything that is called spirituality deserves to be applauded.

Let me give just one example of the current ambiguity of spirituality. "God and Health" has become big news and big business, as the November 10, 2003 issue of Newsweek, as well as many other recent reports indicate.³ A few years ago when I attended a one-day workshop on "Spirituality and Medicine" sponsored by the Park Ridge Center in Chicago I was surprised to learn that about half the medical schools in the US had courses on spirituality. The Newsweek article tells us that by now 70% of schools include such courses. A "Profile" within the Newsweek article features Sir John Templeton and the Foundation he supports dedicated to the exploration of the relation between science and religion. According to the article, "Templeton's foundation is now the nation's largest funder of spirituality research." In October of 2002 I was invited to attend a Templeton Foundation Conference in Philadelphia sponsored by the Metanexus Institute under the title "Spiritual Transformation: A Scientific Research Program." The basic purpose of the conference was to allow finalists representing sixty teams of scientists to hone their draft applications in hopes of winning one of twenty large grants from the Templeton Foundation to explore the relation between spiritual transformation and science. The disciplines represented were many: psychology, sociology, biology, neurobiology, and a host of medical specialties too numerous to mention.

The Metanexus Conference was a fascinating experience for me, alternately enlightening and disconcerting. Since my reading in the area of spirituality and science is not wide, I was introduced to a range of new and often stimulating literature and ideas. What was disconcerting, however, was the image of spirituality reflected in the grant proposals. With the exception of one project that made use of Ignatius Loyola and a brief reference to Theophane the Recluse in another, the Christian spiritual tradition was absent from the proposals. The bibliographies for the projects did not feature works that are part of the current religious and theological discussion of spirituality, though a number of books and articles, classic and contemporary, on religion and psychology did appear (yes, everybody seemed to be familiar with William James!). There were, however, numerous references to Buddhist spirituality, especially to Zen Buddhism, as well as a number of discussions of such phenomena as shamans and New Age. In other words, for these medical and scientific investigators spirituality is essentially an Eastern phenomenon; it has no real history in the West.

I have no simple solution to this disturbing fracture between two worlds of discourse, that is, the use of...