January 28, 2019—The author, Francisco de Osuna, was born in 1492, in the town of Osuna in southern Spain. His family was in the service of a count. At the age of eighteen, he was attracted to the priesthood. After…
A Spirituality Reading List by Fives
Israel Galindo, Associate Dean for Lifelong Learning and Director of Online Education
Someone recently asked me for a reading list of books on spirituality. I’ll start by confessing that coming up with this…
December 24, 2018—John Calvin was the great Protestant reformer from France, who ultimately pastored the church in Geneva. During his Christian journey and ministry as a reformed pastor, he wrote and frequently revised the classical work of theology, Institutes of…
December 10, 2018—Francois Fenelon was born in France in 1651. Fenelon pursued a career in the church. He completed his doctorate and was ordained at the age of twenty-six. He began preaching and writing. Fenelon became influential as a tutor…
December 3, 2018—At the heart of much of what is wrong with the educational program in many churches today is a continued failure to understand the unique corporate nature of both faith and Christian education formation. And while there is…
October 22, 2108—Miguel de Molinos was a prominent Catholic mystic. He was born in Saragossa, Spain in about 1627. He attended a Jesuit college, became a priest, and earned a doctorate in theology. When in his early forties, he went…
October 8, 2018—Teresa de Ahumada y Cepeda entered a convent at twenty years of age and battled many illnesses. Yet her devout convent life and intense prayer practices, led to supernatural experiences, including trances in which she was paralyzed for…
September 10, 2018—Ignatius of Loyola was born as Inigo de Loyola, near the end of the 15th Century. The beginning of the 16th Century was a time of intellectual discovery which was accompanied by religious turmoil. Ignatius was born into…
August 20, 2018—Johann Arndt was a German Lutheran theologian, serving some time as a pastor. He lived in the late 16th and early 17th century (1555-1621). He was born to a Lutheran pastor who served as a chaplain to a…
July 16, 2018—Walter Hilton was born in 1343 and studied church law at Cambridge. At about the age of forty-three, after spending some period of time as a hermit, he began to lead a semi-monastic life with other priests in…
June 18, 2018—At the very beginning of the 15th Century, the German, Thomas a Kempis, became a monk in an Augustinian monastery in the Netherlands. This monastery was comprised of priests who were members of the Brethren of Common Life,…
June 4, 2018—The first confirmed English woman writer was Julian of Norwich. At the age of thirty years, Julian experienced a series of revelations or showings which manifested themselves in her senses, in her mind, and through insights exceeding her…
June 5, 2017—In Leaders Who Last: Sustaining Yourself and Your Ministry, Margaret J. Marcuson has written a deceptively simple book that should be insinuated into the Christmas stockings of your clergy friends who are anxious about coping with the stresses…
The book addresses methods and assistance with obstacles that a Christian educator may encounter during teaching sessions and interactions with members of the congregation.
Thompson asserts that whatever happens in the family life “inevitably touches our spiritual lives, whether for good or for ill”
