Spirituality and History: Questions of Interpretation and Method

by Philip Sheldrake

Shows how and why our understanding of spirituality must take into account the historical factors that have shaped it. Sheldrake’s approach does not just take spiritual traditions at face value, but attempts to uncover the cultural and socially-defined questions that were being posed. He attends to the “underside” of history, examining groups and movements, such as the Beguines, that have been marginalized in standard histories of Christianity.

Genres: Spirituality, Theology, Church History

256 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1991

About the author

Philip Sheldrake is a theologian who has been closely involved with the emergence of Christian Spirituality as an academic field. Sheldrake is Past President of the International Society for the Study of Christian Spirituality, and was Leech Professor of Applied Theology at Durham University. His publications have focused on the interface of spirituality, theology, and religious history, and he has also written on religious reconciliation.

Sheldrake trained in history, philosophy, and theology at the universities of Oxford and London, and later taught at the Universities of London and Cambridge. Sheldrake is Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, Senior Research Fellow, Cambridge Theological Federation, and Honorary Professor, University of Wales. He has also regularly been a visiting professor in the United States.

Reviews

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Required reading for a course. Tough read but worth it.

[Drick · Rating 2 out of 5]

In this book Philip Sheldrake, a leading authority on spirituality, reviews the historical understanding of spirituality and mysticism particularly from a Roman Catholic and Anglican perspective. While he acknowledges the limited nature of the search and the hesitancy for Protestant authors until recently to even use the term "spirituality," I found the book fundamentally unsatisfying. Not only did it limit "spirituality" within Roman Catholicism/Anglicanism, but also within Christianity. I understand that Sheldrake is involved in Interfaith conversations, so hopefully his scope has broadened. Also the bulk of the book was focused on the hermeneutics of history and thus was more of an in-house discussion among historians than about spirituality per se. In short the book was not what I had hoped it would be, which was an overview of spirituality thru history and its relevance for interfaith conversations today.