The Brazos Introduction to Christian Spirituality (review)

Evan Howard identifies five characteristics of the academic study of Christian spirituality today: descriptive rather than prescriptive, placing emphasis on experience, making room for the corporate as well as the individual, “somewhat engaged” (that is, combining theoretical and practical approaches), and interdisciplinary (26–28). Howard’s comprehensive survey exemplifies these familiar characteristics, but what makes The Brazos Introduction to Christian Spirituality different is its textbook-style format, the breadth of its ecumenical reach, the generosity of its reading of diverse views, and the character of its implied readership. Although the volume is not without some limitations, it offers an attractive synthesis of Christian spirituality as both academic discipline and ecclesial practice.

This hardcover textbook surveys Christian spirituality in twelve chapters that include outlines, learning objectives, exercises for personal engagement, chapter summaries, questions for reflection or discussion, and suggestions for further reading. The text is presented in double newspaper-style columns broken up by sidebars, “focus boxes,” charts, pictures, and even cartoons. A first impression might suggest that this textbook is aimed at a high-school-age audience, but the content and vocabulary quickly dispel any such notion. Howard’s writing style is informal and occasionally quite colloquial, but there is no “dumbing down” of the material. The Brazos Introduction to Christian Spirituality would be appropriate for advanced undergraduates or seminarians, and the extensive footnotes and bibliography could suggest research directions for graduate students and professors alike. Howard has managed to produce a systematic and accessible survey while maintaining a lively and distinctive authorial voice—a remarkable achievement.

As Howard notes in the Introduction (11), the first seven chapters dealing with definitions, methods, and the theology of Christian experience, are more difficult because they set forth the theoretical framework. Particularly challenging for many readers—but essential for making sense of the rest of the volume—will be Chapter 3 on “Human Experience,” where Howard discusses the “operations and systems,” “process and stages,” and “depth dimension” of human experience using categories drawn largely from the work of twentieth-century Roman Catholic theologians Donald Gelpi and Bernard Longeran. The last five chapters on the practical aspects of spirituality (spiritual formation, prayer, care, discernment, and renewal) are both easier to read and more immediately engaging for the reader. But the entire book is replete with illustrative stories, analogies, and examples taken from history and contemporary life.

Many contemporary treatments of Christian spirituality that purport to be ecumenical remain focused primarily on the Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant traditions. Since Howard is the director of an Evangelical center in Montrose, Colorado called the Spirituality Shoppe, it is not surprising that he also gives attention to Evangelical traditions, with detailed commentary on a great many biblical texts. But he also draws extensively on Eastern Orthodox sources and on charismatic/Pentecostal practice. The result is perhaps the most robustly ecumenical treatment of Christian spirituality by any single author to date. For example, a chapter on “The Life of Prayer” (299–335) features “focus boxes” on a Celtic Eucharistic chant from the Stowe Missal, Martin Luther’s “A Simple Way to Pray,” the Pentecostal prayer of the Azusa Street Revival of 1906, and the “four waters” imagery from Teresa of Avila’s autobiography. In the same chapter, Howard quotes repeatedly from sources as diverse as Theophan the Recluse, C. S. Lewis, and Karl Barth. Such eclecticism could easily slip over into a hodge-podge jumble of disparate threads, but Howard weaves them all together into a seamless whole. He always provides just enough background information to set his sources in context, and the footnotes point the reader to reliable editions of the original texts in translation. True to his conviction that the phenomena of Christian spirituality present both “basic patterns” and a “wide range of diversity” (415), Howard looks for recurrent themes and patterns without imposing any predetermined order or authoritative vision. Curiously, the only part of the volume that seems more narrowly parochial is the cartoons, all of which reflect Evangelical Protestant perspectives...