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A Brief History of Spirituality
Philip Sheldrake
Blackwell £14.99
(978-1-4051-1771-0)
Church Times Bookshop £13.50
I HAVE been wary of the term “spirituality” since it came into mainstream English vocabulary in the early 1970s, and even more wary of those who speak of “teaching spirituality”, as Philip Sheldrake does in this book. (I recall contributing to a book called Can Spirituality Be Taught? in the 1980s.) Sheldrake claims that “spirituality has become a word that defines our era.” I am not sure that he is right; and, if he is, I am not sure that this is entirely a cause for rejoicing. It is vital to “discern the spirits”. Spirituality is not universally benign.
Yet this is an excellent and helpful study, arising from, and probably directed to, an academic audience, though it is very accessible to those outside universities. The author identifies what he calls four paradigms — the monastic, the mystical, the activist, and the prophetic/critical.
There are, of course, many blurred edges here. Sheldrake moves from the New Testament to the “monastic paradigm” (300-1150), then to “spirituality in the city” (1150-1450). Further chapters
deal with the Reformations (note the plural), the Age of Reason (1700-1900), and modernity and post-modernity. Anyone who wants to locate Christian spiritual traditions and movements in a historical and theological context will find this book to be invaluable.
He is critical of some simplistic views of Celtic spirituality — very much in vogue now, not least in the United States — and says, rightly, that the idea of a conflict between the Celtic and Roman traditions is a modern invention. Historians of early and medieval Christianity have been saying this for a long time. It is also reminiscent of the debates in 1950s Anglo-Catholicism on “the myth of Celtic continuity”.
There are some odd comments in the book, such as the claim that the theology of signs of the times “was coined by Pope John XX”. What about Jesus? Didn’t he mention it? And the question “Can spirituality be taught?” still remains.
The Revd Dr Leech was formerly Community Theologian at St Botolph’s, Aldgate, in east London.
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