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Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality 1.1 (2001) viii-xi



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Spiritus: An Introduction to the Inaugural Issue

Douglas Burton-Christie
Stephanie Paulsell


Breathing, breath, wind, spirit. The Latin word spiritus evokes all these. It is our hope that Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality will evoke for you the living, breathing conversation about Christian spirituality that is alive among scholars and writers today. With this first issue, we invite you to enter into that conversation.

Spiritus is the official journal of the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality (SSCS). Since its inception in 1992, the SSCS has been a gathering place for scholars, writers and practitioners interested in studying Christian spiritual traditions and reflecting on the emerging scholarly field of Christian spirituality. During this time the SSCS produced a small journal, the Christian Spirituality Bulletin, which published important essays on the methodologies of and resources for this new field of study as well as substantial reviews of the most interesting new books in the field. Spiritus will continue these traditions while also, we hope, expanding and deepening the conversation already underway.

What does it mean to say that this is a journal of spirituality? This should be the easiest question to answer. It isn't. In spite of the increasing prominence of the term spirituality within contemporary popular and scholarly discourse, its precise meaning remains maddeningly elusive. Part of this elusiveness no doubt has to do with the relative newness of the term. Although its roots are ancient, it has only recently begun to be used to describe religious experience and the discipline that reflects upon that experience. In popular usage, spirituality seems to mean something roughly equivalent to "the inner life," or the "transcendent dimension" or "depth dimension" of human experience, which may or may not involve an explicitly formulated understanding of the divine. To "have" a spirituality in this sense is to be aware of this dimension, and to give it expression in one's life.

There is much in the contemporary use of the term to suggest that spirituality is largely if not exclusively a personal, individual, interior matter. We believe, however, that studying spirituality from the perspective of a particular religious tradition reveals how inadequate such an understanding of spirituality is. Certainly it is impossible to study Christian spiritual traditions and not be struck by how Christian spirituality has informed and been informed by critical political discourse, [End Page viii] scientific discovery, and postmodern thought. It is impossible to study the full range of Christian spiritual traditions without discovering the countless ways the spiritualities of individuals and communities have affected the world around them for good or ill, and how the world around them has shaped their spiritualities. The best scholarship in the field is undergirded by a lively interplay with the wider arena of concerns to which the study of spirituality is attentive: concerns for justice, for stewardship of the earth, for human flourishing.

To locate our primary focus in the critical exploration and interpretation of specifically Christian spiritual traditions is not, we hope, to suggest a narrow or exclusive focus for the journal. To the contrary: it is our hope that the reflections on Christian spirituality presented in these pages will be situated within the wider conversation about spirituality unfolding within the great religious traditions of the world and within human culture generally. Still, we want to provide a place where the distinctive character of Christian spiritual traditions can be examined, scrutinized, and critiqued, where scholars and writers can meet and engage one another regarding the most pressing questions the study of Christian spirituality can raise.

The ecumenical character of the journal is no less important than its location within the Christian tradition. The Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality came into being as a fundamentally ecumenical venture because of a conviction that ecumenical conversation that both recognizes difference and is willing to listen to the voice of others is crucial to the larger task of interpreting Christian spirituality. It is our hope that Spiritus will...

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