hand, deals with the fruits of spiritual practices—the nature of the faith development that the ascetical practices make possible. As Christian mystics gain increasing attention today, the works of Ignatius of Loyola are used to teach methods of prayer, self-examination, and spiritual discernment, whereas those of Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross are probed for their insights into the fruits of mystical prayer. These rich theological traditions of the pre-Reformation church, especially as they address issues of spiritual development, are being rediscovered and used today by searching, thoughtful, mainline Protestants.
Although the rubrics of ascetical theology and mystical theology were used more prominently earlier in this century to describe this religious literature, since Vatican II such reflection has generally been encompassed by the category “spiritual theology.” This area of study deals not simply with asceticism and mysticism, but with a broader understanding of spirituality that brings it into the purview of all of life.
The lack of attention by mainline Protestants to ascetical, mystical, and spiritual theologies resulted in the loss of contact with spiritual practices, including various forms of prayer and spiritual disciplines. As a result, in recent decades many Protestants found they had no avenue of access that opened believers to an experiential relationship with God. Without the benefit of an experiential relationship with God or the theological reflections that inform and sustain spiritual practices, mainline Protestants have been denied an important source of religious insight. It is these disciplines that can provide an experiential relationship with the sacred and a means for deepening one's faith. By not focusing on these spiritual traditions, or even keeping them alive, the experiences that they provided were also lost.
The current interest in integrating intellectual curiosities with faith-transforming practices is leading mainline Protestants to reexamine their history from the lens provided by spirituality. As these seekers within graduate theological programs explore ascetical and mystical theologies of the Roman Catholic Church, many are being inspired to view their own traditions from this perspective. Consequently, a number of characteristics of mainline Protestant spirituality are emerging that have heretofore not been fully explored, in part because they were not identified as the work of the Spirit. It is important to begin this chapter on theological insights with elements of the mainline Protestant tradition that need to be celebrated as gifts of the Spirit.
THE GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT
The Ethical Conscience
The theological affirmations that inform spiritual practices need to be consonant with the Protestant heritage that has brought many blessings to its communities of faith. At their best, mainline Protestant traditions exercise judicious leadership in the arenas of ethical reflection and social action. Those in positions of church leadership frequently feel a sense of solidarity with victims of oppression and work to rectify social, political, and economic inequities. Women's rights and issues, from ordination to the prevention of physical abuse, have become important on denominational agendas; ministries of social justice and economics both domestically and internationally are supported; issues involving human rights and sexuality—abortion, sexual expression, justice for gays and lesbians—are being debated. Although policies related to social issues do not always receive enthusiastic endorsements from all quarters of the church, attention to them is still a defining characteristic of mainline Protestant traditions.
The ethical conscience, especially as it relates to social concerns, is at the heart of mainline Protestant life. Pastoral theologian Seward Hiltner probably speaks for many mainline Protestants when he says that people come closest to God when they come closest to following their ethical conscience.1 The identification of “God's voice” with the ethical conscience is a strength of mainline Protestant traditions.
Unfortunately, many Protestants fail to see their ethical commitments to social justice as gracious gifts from God. They affirm that God is a force of love and compassion at work in the world, but inasmuch as love and compassion are not the sole prerogatives of religious folks, mainline Protestants often minimize the extent to which these powers are associated with divine activity. Lacking a propensity for theological interpretation, they view ethical actions in behalf of others not expressly as God's handiwork, but as the work required of any good citizen. By so doing they minimize the theological significance of their ethical conscience and the actions that flow from it.
The commitment to social justice is an inestimable spiritual gift integral to mainline Protestant spirituality. This commitment allows mainline Protestants to affirm that God is at work in the daily lives of people struggling for justice and peace. This recognition has the potential to augment the mainline Protestant tendency to limit God's voice to the ethical conscience. It is an irony that although official Protestant teachings—for example, church doctrines—avoid claims that limit God's sphere of influence, in the “lived experience of faith” of many Christians, God's leading is largely restricted to two areas—the ethical conscience and the response to profound grief.
During times of crisis, when our radical dependence on God becomes a daily act of faith, mainline Protestants often speak of God's presence with them. The affective depths at which daily life has been impacted legitimizes this often-passing sense of personal relationship with God. Mainline Protestants live their faith in the paradoxical space between being too modest to speak for God except on social issues, and too reasonable to be truly dependent on God except in times of tragedy.
If ethical responsibility at the social level is a spiritual asset of mainline Protestants, it is the complementary development of the personal aspect of a relationship with the sacred—briefly present at a time of crisis—that is required for a more holistic stance to spiritual development. The development of a personal relationship with the sacred may inform the nature of one's social vision and sustain persons who work for social justice. It is the development of this personal relationship that this book addresses by providing a theological grounding and historical background for the practices included in the final chapter. This correcting does not deny the role of God's voice in the ethical conscience. If anything, the ethical conscience is enhanced by acknowledging the links between a prophetic vision and the spiritual practices that keep it alive, vital, and faithful.
Critical Study
Mainline Protestant spirituality has been shaped by a commitment to critical reflection. As noted in this book's Introduction, since the Enlightenment mainline Protestants have been committed both to the worldviews of their surrounding cultures and to the truths of Christian faith. That is to say, as advances were made in science and in the understanding of the workings of the universe, many Christians in Protestant traditions sought to reconcile the truths of faith with the findings of science and the insights of philosophy.
In the sixteenth century Protestants challenged the Roman Catholic Church on matters of doctrine and authority; in the eighteenth century they challenged the worldview that supported the church of the later Middle Ages. The advent of the Enlightenment established a new standard of truth. No longer was the authority of the church a sufficient standard of truth. Inquiring Protestants adopted a sense of skepticism and doubt toward truths that appeared grounded solely on church traditions and religious authorities. Reason became the celebrated human faculty.
Although by the nineteenth century this commitment to reason did not eliminate a commitment to revelation, it firmly committed mainline Protestant traditions to scholarly inquiry. For Protestants, the question kept arising: How can God's truth be an aspect of both the world of nature and the Word of faith? The truths of faith, the revelation of God in Jesus, and the teachings of the church were submitted to the bar of reason. Biblical texts and historical traditions were subjected to the same scrutiny as so-called secular literary works such as The Iliad or a text attributed to Shakespeare.
The biblical scholarship of the
