Project MUSE®: Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/176
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality.daily12026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 1 (2001) through current issueLatest Articles: Spiritus: A Journal of Christian SpiritualityTWOProject MUSE®Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality1535-31171533-1709Latest articles in Spiritus: A Journal of Christian Spirituality. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Toward a Transformational Christian Ecospirituality
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986930
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Let us sing as we go. May our struggles and our concern for this planet never take away the joy of our hopeWhile climate science continues to verify that climate change is a major contributor to weather-related disasters around the world, efforts to mitigate climate change are failing. People within and outside of traditional religions acknowledge that the source of this failure lies not only in government and corporation resistance to effective action but also within each one of us. We need to do serious inner work and participate in the Great Work described by Thomas Berry as humanity’s essential, ongoing task to transition from being a disrupting force on Earth to becoming a “benign presence.”1 And importantly
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/176/image/coversmallToward a Transformational Christian Ecospirituality2026-03-31text/htmlen-USToward a Transformational Christian Ecospirituality2026-03-312026TWOProject MUSE®704522026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-31Learning Again to Read the “Book of Nature”: A Corrective to Ecophobia
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986935
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It is safe to say that in the contemporary, digitally mediated, fast-paced, super-market-supplied, air-conditioned, rapid-transit world, many people live at a physical and intellectual distance from the more-than-human world, or what is sometimes called “nature.” For this reason, a sort of eco-ignorance has taken hold of humanity, at least those in so-called “developed” nations who have the economic means to maintain an uncritical distance from the most overt encounters with nonhuman landscapes and creatures. Those who reside in modern urban contexts are especially challenged to recognize the natural world in which we live. The eons-old life cycles and food chains that highlighted our interdependence with the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/176/image/coversmallLearning Again to Read the “Book of Nature”: A Corrective to Ecophobia2026-03-31text/htmlen-USLearning Again to Read the “Book of Nature”: A Corrective to Ecophobia2026-03-312026TWOProject MUSE®1024322026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-31Jesus Between: Bonhoeffer, Interbeing, and Co-Becoming in an Emergent Christian Spirituality
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986936
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On the evening of the full moon, nineteen of us ride out of London, Ohio, heading southwest on the Prairie Grass Trail toward South Charleston. It’s a beautiful ten-mile ride, flat. The trail threads through woods, meadows, cultivated farm fields with roadside ditches full of water this June night. The air is thick with humidity and it’s warm as we ride toward the setting sun, the colors filling the sky long after sundown. I try to notice each potential hazard on the trail: a fallen branch on the outbound side just before a certain road crossing, a pile of brush or scattered debris after another. But mostly I’m just biking, enjoying the pull of muscles and the scattered conversations as riders drift forward and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/176/image/coversmallJesus Between: Bonhoeffer, Interbeing, and Co-Becoming in an Emergent Christian Spirituality2026-03-31text/htmlen-USJesus Between: Bonhoeffer, Interbeing, and Co-Becoming in an Emergent Christian Spirituality2026-03-312026TWOProject MUSE®803972026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-31Evolving Methodologies in the Study of Spirituality ed. by Gilberto Cavazos-González and Rossano Zas Friz De Col, and: Studying Christian Spirituality by David B. Perrin, and: The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in Spirituality and Contemplative Studies ed. by Bernadette Flanagan and Kerri Clough (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986940
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This is a review of three recent books that address methodologies for the academic study of Christian spirituality. The advent of these three titles is indicative of the increased interest and necessity of exploring methodologies in the study of Christian spirituality that will help propel the field forward. We will move through this exploration in the following pattern. First, we will explore a debate on methodology between scholars representing the Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality (SSCS) and the Forum of Professors of Spiritual Theology in Italy (FPTSI) from 2019. Second, we will examine the solution David Perrin offers to reconcile the different approaches taken by these groups in his turn to
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/176/image/coversmallEvolving Methodologies in the Study of Spirituality ed. by Gilberto Cavazos-González and Rossano Zas Friz De Col, and: Studying Christian Spirituality by David B. Perrin, and: The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in Spirituality and Contemplative Studies ed. by Bernadette Flanagan and Kerri Clough (review)2026-03-31text/htmlen-USEvolving Methodologies in the Study of Spirituality ed. by Gilberto Cavazos-González and Rossano Zas Friz De Col, and: Studying Christian Spirituality by David B. Perrin, and: The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in Spirituality and Contemplative Studies ed. by Bernadette Flanagan and Kerri Clough (review)2026-03-312026TWOProject MUSE®202662026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-31Christian Ecospirituality: Dialoguing with Animistic Cosmologies
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986939
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Efforts to construct Christian ecospiritualities have sought to incorporate the wisdom of animistic cosmologies, both those practiced by indigenous peoples in Africa, Oceania, South and North America, and the tenets of the new animism which is influenced by these traditional belief systems. I propose that elaborating contemporary Christian ecospiritualities inspired by this Indigenous wisdom also requires dialogue with teachings of the Christian tradition. The goal of this essay is to show how the ecological teachings of Pope Francis, the spirituality of Francis of Assisi, and the creation theology of Bonaventure, a medieval Franciscan friar, can provide a structure for dialogue with animistic cosmologies and thus
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/176/image/coversmallChristian Ecospirituality: Dialoguing with Animistic Cosmologies2026-03-31text/htmlen-USChristian Ecospirituality: Dialoguing with Animistic Cosmologies2026-03-312026TWOProject MUSE®702592026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-31Küme Mongen: Learning from the Mapuche’s Wisdom and Spirituality
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986938
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Pope Francis’s post-synodal apostolic exhortation Querida Amazonia (2020) marked a milestone in contemporary Roman Catholic consciousness by highlighting not only the need to make Indigenous peoples visible, but also to embrace seriously the wisdom that these peoples can offer to humanity. This call is not limited to symbolic or pastoral inclusion, but also raises profound questions: What are the foundations that support this attentive listening? How does it translate into ecclesial practice? And what implications does it have for Christian spirituality as a whole?These questions provide fertile ground for reflection. Indeed, Francis’s proposal not only challenges the Catholic church in its relationship with
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/176/image/coversmallKüme Mongen: Learning from the Mapuche’s Wisdom and Spirituality2026-03-31text/htmlen-USKüme Mongen: Learning from the Mapuche’s Wisdom and Spirituality2026-03-312026TWOProject MUSE®566882026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-31Reclaiming a Life-Affirming Christian Asceticism: Simone Weil’s Call to Attention
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986937
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Love is not consolation, it is light.1During Lent three years ago, I paused momentarily at the entrance of a Parisian church, next to the announcement desk covered with various leaflets. One of them caught my attention: it was aimed at a very precise audience— exclusively men, aged between twenty and forty—and presented a spiritual program of conversion for the next weeks until Easter, involving an impressive list of ascetical commitments: daily cold showers, strict fasting from soft drinks, alcohol, desserts, television and films, and sexual abstinence. This French version of an Exodus 90 program,2 with its signs of renewed interest in ascetical practices among young adults, made me reflect on what attracted young
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/176/image/coversmallReclaiming a Life-Affirming Christian Asceticism: Simone Weil’s Call to Attention2026-03-31text/htmlen-USReclaiming a Life-Affirming Christian Asceticism: Simone Weil’s Call to Attention2026-03-312026TWOProject MUSE®645492026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-31A Perennial Flow: Ecospirituality for Replenishing Our Sense of Belonging as Earth Creatures
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986931
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Many characterize the last few centuries of industrialization as a period when humans radically disconnected from experience and understanding of themselves as part of what we call the natural world. This disconnection has resulted in phenomenological typologies of contemporary malaise, variously identifying it as addiction (Glendinning), boredom (Monbiot), alienation (Berry), and (unfortunately) many more.1 As this recognition of our severance from all that is forces itself upon us, many attempts to reconnect have emerged. One of these attempts, both within religious contexts and outside them, is a resurgence of ecospirituality. The intuition that there is more to life than what our contemporary modern and
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/176/image/coversmallA Perennial Flow: Ecospirituality for Replenishing Our Sense of Belonging as Earth Creatures2026-03-31text/htmlen-USA Perennial Flow: Ecospirituality for Replenishing Our Sense of Belonging as Earth Creatures2026-03-312026TWOProject MUSE®732742026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-31Uselessness as Disruption: Spiritual Resources for Eco-Crisis
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986932
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About ten years ago, I had the opportunity to teach a course at my alma mater, Simon Fraser University, about human beings’ relationship with the natural world. The course was held at SFU’s Harbour Centre campus, directly across the water from North Vancouver and three ski resorts. One day during a class break, I stood at a window with a student, a man in his early sixties, who looked at the mountains and said something like, “You know, I wouldn’t need to learn about climate change from your lectures. I’ve lived here my whole life and watched it happen, plain as day. Every winter, the snow line moves to higher and higher elevations. Even if people don’t understand the science, how do they deny what they can
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/176/image/coversmallUselessness as Disruption: Spiritual Resources for Eco-Crisis2026-03-31text/htmlen-USUselessness as Disruption: Spiritual Resources for Eco-Crisis2026-03-312026TWOProject MUSE®324092026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-31Eco-Preaching and Spiritual Formation for the Living Community of Earth
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986933
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At the close of Émile Zola’s brilliant 1885 novel, Germinal, protagonist Étienne Lantier muses on possibilities for dismantling the oppressive labor conditions and stark economic inequities that destroy the bodies and crush the spirits of coal miners in northern France. Zola’s narrative graphically portrays the extreme suffering of mining families that, under Étienne’s naïve leadership, have been striking for fairer wages. Gruesome deaths from starvation, armed conflict, and a catastrophic mine disaster have left the narrative landscape littered with the bodies of men, women, and children. Trapped miners have experienced their final moments in horrific dread as enormous subterranean seas flooded, breaking into the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/176/image/coversmallEco-Preaching and Spiritual Formation for the Living Community of Earth2026-03-31text/htmlen-USEco-Preaching and Spiritual Formation for the Living Community of Earth2026-03-312026TWOProject MUSE®863162026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-31Dwelling in the Dark in a Time of Climate Despair
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986934
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When despair for the world grows in me . . .Maria, a 28-year-old health care professional, is in her therapist’s office. “I’ve lost the will to try anymore,” she says, referring to her anxiety about mounting global ecological crises. Maria does not consider herself an activist, but she is intentional about practicing a sustainable lifestyle, to the best of her ability. She eats a vegetarian diet, uses public transportation when she can, uses an energy company that relies primarily on renewables, donates to organizations involved in ocean conservation and environmental justice in her community, uses eco-friendly household cleaning products, tries to avoid single-use plastics, and helped to organize a “creation care”
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/176/image/coversmallDwelling in the Dark in a Time of Climate Despair2026-03-31text/htmlen-USDwelling in the Dark in a Time of Climate Despair2026-03-312026TWOProject MUSE®566312026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-31Snowy Tracks on the Tundra
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986929
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I was settled in my comfortable pew, eyes closed during the pastoral prayer, when I heard the minister ask God that we might somehow learn to leave lighter footprints on this good earth. It was a nice turn of phrase, but it startled me. My thoughts dragged me back decades to my job one summer in northern Canada. I had been hired as a deckhand on a large tugboat pushing pods of barges “down north” on the mighty Mackenzie River toward the Arctic Ocean. The barges were loaded with oil exploration equipment—trucks, generators, derricks, “mud” boxes, and miles of drill pipe for boring deep into the earth.Periodically we would run the barges up against the shore and drive the machinery off to designated sites on the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/176/image/coversmallSnowy Tracks on the Tundra2026-03-31text/htmlen-USSnowy Tracks on the Tundra2026-03-312026TWOProject MUSE®191162026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-31The Heart at the Heart of the World: Re-visioning the Sacred Heart for the Ecozoic Era by Mary Frohlich (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986941
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This book begins with the wager that our world has a Heart and because of this, despite growing contemporary concerns, that there is hope. Frohlich sets the context in stating that we are living within the “ultimate chaos narrative” (xx) of one destructive event after the next. To counter this, and in order that we can become people of wisdom, she argues that we need a new story, and thus narrative and Frohlich’s belief in its ability to influence a life becomes a central underlying theme. While this book does not technically offer a new story, it does go some way toward revisioning one that has played a prominent and vital role in different forms and contexts throughout history—this being the story of the Sacred
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/176/image/coversmallThe Heart at the Heart of the World: Re-visioning the Sacred Heart for the Ecozoic Era by Mary Frohlich (review)2026-03-31text/htmlen-USThe Heart at the Heart of the World: Re-visioning the Sacred Heart for the Ecozoic Era by Mary Frohlich (review)2026-03-312026TWOProject MUSE®103122026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-31Ecomartyrdom in the Americas: Living and Dying for Our Common Home by Elizabeth O’Donnell-Gandolfo (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986942
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Since data collection started in 2012, more than 2,000 murders have been reported of so-called land and environmental defenders by the civil society organization Global Witness. More than half of these have taken place in Latin America. This data does not include the thousands of others who have experienced death threats, intimidation, harassment, and psychological and sexual violence, for contesting environmental destruction caused by infrastructure projects, mineral and fossil fuel extraction, logging, or agriculture. At the time of writing, the Global Environmental Justice Atlas reports more than 4,000 socioenvironmental conflicts around the world, many involving people who are risking their lives. What animates
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/176/image/coversmallEcomartyrdom in the Americas: Living and Dying for Our Common Home by Elizabeth O’Donnell-Gandolfo (review)2026-03-31text/htmlen-USEcomartyrdom in the Americas: Living and Dying for Our Common Home by Elizabeth O’Donnell-Gandolfo (review)2026-03-312026TWOProject MUSE®106032026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-31Radical Kinship: A Christian Ecospirituality by Rachel Wheeler (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986943
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“Learn tropism toward the difficult.” This quote from poet Kim Stafford stands as the epigraph of one of the chapters of this book. Tropism is a term from biological science, referring to the way living things grow toward or away from certain environmental factors such as sunlight, water, minerals, or chemicals. The essential meaning of “Learn tropism toward the difficult” has striking similarities to some of John of the Cross’s admonitions to choose the lowest, the least, and the most difficult in order to grow closer to God, but the biological metaphor completely resituates the meaning as an expression of the embodied desire for the fullness of life. A core message of Rachel Wheeler’s book can thus be summarized
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/176/image/coversmallRadical Kinship: A Christian Ecospirituality by Rachel Wheeler (review)2026-03-31text/htmlen-USRadical Kinship: A Christian Ecospirituality by Rachel Wheeler (review)2026-03-312026TWOProject MUSE®77242026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-31Soul Woundedness: Spirituality on the Streets of Seattle by Paul Houston Blankenship-Lai (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986944
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Soul Woundedness: Spirituality on the Streets of Seattle is a profound in-depth study of the spiritualties of people who are homeless in Seattle. Author Paul Houston Blankenship-Lai’s scholarly expertise in the study of contemporary spirituality and dedicated fieldwork with people who are homeless deliver a strong foundation for further research and challenges Christian spirituality to reconstruct itself around building friendships with those who are poor.Blankenship-Lai brings many years of research to this study. As he lived in Seattle from 2016 through 2019 amongst people who were homeless, he offers ample firsthand experience. He shares an ethnographic process that cultivates a consciousness of the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/176/image/coversmallSoul Woundedness: Spirituality on the Streets of Seattle by Paul Houston Blankenship-Lai (review)2026-03-31text/htmlen-USSoul Woundedness: Spirituality on the Streets of Seattle by Paul Houston Blankenship-Lai (review)2026-03-312026TWOProject MUSE®101382026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-31Faith-Based Participation in Natural-Resource Governance: Communities Defending Life and Territories in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico by S. Deneulin et al. (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/986945
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This report describes interdisciplinary research regarding the impact of Christian beliefs and practices on actions to protect human communities and the environment in developing countries where extractive and infrastructure projects threaten a geographical area and way of life. The report was organized and staffed by two institutes cooperating with each other—the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the Laudato Si’ Research Institute. The latter is affiliated with Campion Hall, the Jesuit academic center at Oxford University. Its goal is to “address the contemporary socio-ecological crisis in an integrated way” (https://lsri.campion.ox.ac.uk/our-story). Resident and visiting scholars come from a variety of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-12T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/176/image/coversmallFaith-Based Participation in Natural-Resource Governance: Communities Defending Life and Territories in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico by S. Deneulin et al. (review)2026-03-31text/htmlen-USFaith-Based Participation in Natural-Resource Governance: Communities Defending Life and Territories in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico by S. Deneulin et al. (review)2026-03-312026TWOProject MUSE®105662026-05-12T00:00:00-05:002026-03-31