This was the second time I've taught this class. The first time, two years ago, I kept my focus almost entirely on spiritual formation and didn't wade into theological waters. But since that class I've puzzled more and more about the theological foundations of Christian discipleship and spiritual formation. I've discerned locations, I think, of theological friction that can impede, stall, or confuse our spiritual formation efforts. I believe some attention needs to be devoted to the juncture of theology and formation. In this series I'll be sharing some thoughts about frictions I perceive at the theology/formation point of contact.
As is well known, most low-church Protestant traditions, where I am located, don't have robust or thick spiritual formation practices. For example, Bible study, of a very intellectual sort, was the only spiritual formation tool available in the church of my youth. Yes, we were told to pray, but prayer was petitionary rather than formational.
Given this impoverishment, books like Richard Foster's The Celebration of Discipline, published in 1978, came as a welcome intervention in evangelical spaces. Foster, and those who followed him, mined the riches of the Catholic spiritual formation tradition and shared those with low-church Protestants. Beyond Bible study, practices like contemplative prayer, silence, fasting, Sabbath, spiritual direction, the liturgical calendar, and Lectio Divina were embraced. A DMin class like mine concerning Christian discipleship and spiritual formation focuses a lot on these sorts of practices. And yet, there are some frictions here.
Some of these frictions are cultural. Low-church Protestant congregations often display allergies to practices deemed "too Catholic." Growing up, I remember my father getting into a debate at our church for having us light candles during a worship service. This was a silly conflict, but it illustrates the point, how spiritual practices native to one ecosystem can struggle when transplanted in different soil. Even saying aloud words like "examen" or "Lectio Divina" can cause some Protestants to roll their eyes at their pastors. I've seen it!
I'm calling these frictions "cultural" as there isn't anything deeply theological at stake in a natural knee-jerk distrust of something new, alien, or foreign being introduced into your ecclesial ecosystem. No big biblical or doctrinal issue hangs in the balance when you light candles. Nor does sitting in silent prayer on a Sunday morning. But such things are culturally weird for some churches.
A lot of the pushback about transplanting Catholic practices in low-church Protestant soil is of this cultural sort. So it's worth paying attention to the tolerances of your church when attempting these transplants. However, the frictions I want to discuss go deeper than mere weirdness. These are theological tensions between Protestant theology and Catholic spiritual formation that aren't much noticed or attended to. I'll turn to talk about some of these in the posts to come.
