Early Reader Response
What scholars, practitioners, and teachers of spiritual direction are saying about The Making of Modern Spiritual Direction. Click any endorsement to read it in full.
Every spiritual director inherits assumptions they didn’t consciously choose. This book is the story of how those assumptions were made, and by whom.
Drawing on sixteen years of practice, original archival research, and rare interviews with the founders of the first formal training programs, this groundbreaking history traces how spiritual direction was quietly revolutionized in the 1960s and ’70s. Before that transformation, the practice was marginalized, informal, and largely confined to retreats where one director might serve three hundred retreatants. Then, in a decade, everything changed.
What drove the change? Psychology entered the sanctuary. Vatican II cracked open centuries of institutional authority. A generation of Jesuit, Protestant, and lay pioneers asked uncomfortable questions about power, intimacy, and what it even means to “direct” another person’s soul, and built new institutions around their contested answers.
The result was not consensus. It was a living argument that continues today: Is spiritual direction primarily about deepening relationship with God or facilitating personal transformation? Is the director’s authority earned, institutional, or charismatic? And does the word direction itself belong in the tradition at all?
Rigorous, revisionist, and deeply personal, The Making of Modern Spiritual Direction does not merely recount this history, it troubles it, believing that any tradition worth loving is worth interrogating. For practitioners, trainers, and serious students of Christian spirituality, this is the book the field has been waiting for.
Burgmayer’s engaging presentation of the theological and cultural roots of North American spiritual direction training programs can help readers understand more deeply why they offer or teach direction as they do. His work suggests ways to articulate what we most value about the ministry of spiritual direction and provides language to describe the broad variety of perspectives that have shaped contemporary practice. His discussions about the influence of insights from psychology, the importance of theological distinctives, the debates about formation vs. training, and the tensions between academic and independent programs are irenic and enlightening. I heartily encourage anyone who either practices direction or works to form, train, or supervise spiritual directors to read this book.
A tour de force, The Making of Modern Spiritual Direction unfolds as a comprehensive achievement in mapping the story of the evolution of spiritual direction programs in North America. Exploring a wide range of religious and theological traditions, the pioneers of first, second and emerging generations of training programs are recognized for their unique contributions to the art and science of tending souls on their journeys into depth/Depth.
For the first time, this book puts all the dots together and invites the reader into the world of the rapid expansion of spiritual direction programs from the later 1960’s to the close of the 20th century, while honoring the ancient strand of care of the soul traditions that preceded the emergence of the psychological, anthropological and social science innovations of the modern era.
In a forthright manner, Paul Burgmayer explores the tensions and state-of-the-art developments between and among varying approaches exemplified by the multitude of post-modern spiritual direction programs. This text provides an historical relief where the movements, pioneering innovations illustrated by persons and personalities, ancient and fresh pedagogies, and charism and institutions raise and reveal the broad and evolving landscape of the ancient ever-new practice of the encounter with the holy quest for human becoming.
The Making of Modern Spiritual Direction is both an informative and instructive piece assembled like nothing else in the field. Paul’s well-researched work is a truly unique contribution to the contemporary practice of spiritual accompaniment and is bound to be an enduring reference work for those of us who care about the historical context and potential future of such sacred work which continues to evolve over time. What a gift, this much-needed resource!
The Making of Modern Spiritual Direction provides a fascinating, well researched look at the evolution of spiritual direction over the last six decades. What is spiritual direction and what happens in a session? The answer is “it depends on the director, what their training emphasized, and how they understand their role.” I’ve been offering and teaching spiritual direction for over 20 years and what I learned from this book helps me more deeply understand and appreciate my profession. I recommend The Making of Modern Spiritual Direction to any and all spiritual directors, formation and training educators, in fact anyone eager to dig into the roots of spiritual direction.