For the Bookshelf: It Takes More than Love
For the Bookshelf: It Takes More than Love
Like most pastors, prior to weddings, I meet with a couple several times.
Early in my ministry, I used a premarital survey that assessed people’s values and feelings and then highlighted various areas, like money, communication, or sex, that might…

To Count Our Days: a history of Columbia Theological Seminary
An interview from Vantage magazine with Erskine Clarke, Professor Emeritus of American Religious History about his new book on the history of Columbia Theological Seminary
Columbia Theological Seminary’s rich history provides a window into the…

For the Bookshelf: Introduction to the Devout Life
Born in 1567 into a wealthy family, Francis de Sales received a wonderful education as the oldest of thirteen children.
At age fifteen, his father arranged for him to attend the University of Paris, with the intention that he would…

The Third Spiritual Alphabet
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 three years…

A Spirituality Reading List for 2019
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…

For the Bookshelf: On Prayer—Conversation with God
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…

For the Bookshelf: The Complete Fenelon
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…

Planning and Organizing for Christian Education Formation
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…

For the Bookshelf: The Spiritual Guide
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…

For the Bookshelf: The Interior Castle
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…

For the Bookshelf: The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius
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…

For the Bookshelf: True Christianity
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…

For the Bookshelf: The Scale of Perfection
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…

For the Bookshelf: The Imitation of Christ
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,…

For the Bookshelf: Revelations of Divine Love
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…

