Book Review - Sheri D. Kling, "A Process Spirituality" - Breathing In New Moments of Transformity

In a word, we must share cultures of belonging. There's no mystery here. We all know this. Process Spirituality is simply a way to say,

"Hey, let's learn to get along, respect each other, try to love one another, and let societal transformation become a worldwide contagion."

Put God in the middle of all this and you have the fuller story. Again, no mystery here, but there is every reason to pursue this dream till it becomes a real and constant model for behavioral change.

R.E. Slater

July 31, 2020

*I'm sure this would be a helpful book to read but at $95 the masses will never see it. If process Christianity has anything to offer it needs to be affordable and available to everyone. Otherwise we're left to figure it out on our own. - re slater

SHERI D. KLING

B.A. PURDUE UNIVERSITY, M.A.T.S. LUTHERAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY, PH.D., M.A.R. CLAREMONT SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY

https://theology.sewanee.edu/

https://theology.sewanee.edu/faculty-staff/kling-bio/

Sheri D. Kling studied theology with an emphasis in religion and science at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (LSTC) and then followed her passion for connecting theology and spirituality with psychology to the Claremont School of Theology (CST) in Claremont, California. Seeing deep resonances between the process thought of Alfred North Whitehead and the analytical psychology of Carl Gustav Jung, especially in terms of creativity and transformative spirituality, she integrated the work of these two thinkers in her doctoral program.

As a public scholar-theologian, Kling works in the interdisciplinary space where worldviews, beliefs, and practices can create either dis-ease and suffering or psycho-spiritual wholeness and common flourishing. Drawing from process philosophy/theology, Jungian psychology, and mystical spirituality, Sheri focuses on communicating theological ideas and practices that positively impact humans’ relationships with God, self, and world, especially the use of dream work as a spiritual practice for divine encounter, personal integration, and widening our relationship to creation.

In the fall of 2017, Kling traveled to Prague to speak at the International Transpersonal Conference and on the way there, delivered three lectures at Palacky University in Olomouc, Czech Republic where she had been invited to be a collaborating lecturer for their program in social and spiritual determinants of health. Also that year, she participated in a webinar on Real Spirituality for the Church organized by Process and Faith, a part of the Center for Process Studies that brings resources on process theology to congregations.

Prior to entering graduate theological studies at LSTC, Kling had a successful career in marketing and communication in the enterprise software industry in the Atlanta area followed by a deeply creative period in the arts as a performing singer, songwriter, and recording artist. While enrolled in doctoral studies at CST, she served as project manager for strategic planning at Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, California. It was this extensive background that led her to Sewanee and her first position as associate registrar for curriculum, publications, and communication. She considers her current position in the School of Theology to be the culmination of her work experience, theological education, and passion for spiritual transformation.

Books

• “Avoiding a Fatal Error: Extending Whitehead’s Symbolism beyond Language,” in Rethinking Whitehead's Symbolism: Thought, Language, and Culture, Edinburgh University Press, September 2017
• “An Aesthetic Revolution of Love,” in For Our Common Home: Process-Relational Responses to Laudato Si', Process Century Press, August 25, 2015
• “Bifurcation: Divorce or Divergence?” Response to Jeffery D. Long (“Non-Duality, the Bifurcation of Nature, and the Question of Maya: the Integration of Jain, Vedantic, and Process Approaches to Deep Ecology”) and Donald A. Crosby (“In Imago Naturae: the Ultimacy of Nature as a Closing of the Gaps”), in Beyond the Bifurcation of Nature, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, November 2014
• Finding Home: Rural Reflections on the Journey to Wholeness

Other Publications and Papers

• “The God of their Dreams: A Qualitative Inquiry into the Lived Experience of Christian Dream Workers and the Mystical Nature of their Experience” Presented in the Mysticism Group for the American Academy of Religion/Society for Biblical Literature conference in November of 2014. 
•  “Wisdom Became Flesh: An Analysis of the Prologue to the Gospel of John” Currents in Theology and Mission, Vol. 40, No. 3, June 2013
•  Review of “The Holy Spirit, Chi, and the Other: A Model of Global and Intercultural Pneumatology, by Grace Ji-Sun Kim” Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue, Issue 10, September 2012
• “Darwin, Hubble, and God: Theologies of ‘The Fall’ in Light of Modern Science” Claremont Journal of Religion, Issue 2, July 2012

Music

Let It Unfold, 2002

Heartland, 2005 

Passions & Prodigals, 2005

Amazon Link

A Process Spirituality:

Christian and Transreligious Resources

for Transformation Hardcover

by Sheri D. Kling

American culture is in a state of critical fragmentation. The author argues that we will solve neither the ecological crisis nor our social estrangement from each until we transform our perception of life as embodied and interconnected, and rediscover what is sacred through transformative lived experiences of wholeness.

Using an embodied theological framework supported by comparative, hermeneutical, and constructive methodologies, A Process Spirituality synthesizes theoretical, empirical, and practical resources to construct a hopeful and holistic understanding of God, the world, and the self. 

Interweaving Alfred North Whitehead’s vision of a relational cosmos with Carl Gustav Jung’s integrated, relational psyche, and a powerful spiritual praxis of dream work creates a generative matrix through which to perceive a God-world reality characterized by value, relationality, and transformation in which individuals matter, belong, and can experience positive change.

Such a Christian and transreligious vision of hope offers individuals the possibility and capacity to move from a state of fragmentation to one of psycho-spiritual wholeness and flourishing.

About the Author

Sheri D. Kling is associate dean and executive director of the Beecken Center of the School of Theology at the University of the South, a faculty member of the Haden Institute, and a visiting lecturer with Palacky University in Social and Spiritual Determinants of Health.

Review

In this bold book, Sheri Kling offers an integrative vision for a better future. Incorporating psychology, philosophy, religion, and more, Kling weaves together a proposal to overcome division and confusion. This book is for those who want to united deep thinking and open living for real transformation!

-- Thomas Jay Oord, author of The Uncontrolling Love of God

Christianity is at a crossroads. Perhaps this is fitting for a religion whose central symbol is the cross. In the United States, more people than ever before report being religiously unaffiliated, especially young people. At the same time, more people are identifying as "spiritual but not religious." Sheri Kling's A Process Spirituality is indeed a resource for effecting the much needed transformation of the Christian religion so that it might better address the pluralistic spiritual needs of our age. With help from Whitehead, Jung, and feminist theology, Kling brilliantly diagnoses the cosmological and psychological underpinnings of the modern world view, clearing the way for a renewed appreciation of the embodied and imaginative dimensions of human spirituality.This is not just another theoretical framework, however; Kling also shares well-developed practical methods for the cultivation of dreams and healing encounters with the divine that, God willing, will help revitalize Christian spiritual life by welcoming the followers of Jesus into the more relational, inclusive, and human mode of existence that, it is safe to say, he originally intended.

-- Matthew T. Segall, California Institute of Integral Studies

This is an exquisite text joining mind, body, and spirit. Within its pages, we find wisdom to guide our personal lives as well as our lives as planetary citizens. Twenty-first century wholeness and healing must embrace conscious and unconscious, analytic thinking and dream work, and tradition and novelty. Sheri Kling provides an integrative path toward the healing we seek for ourselves and our communities. In a time in which theologians, psychologists, and philosophers often think small, Kling provides a large vision of the human adventure, capable of inspiring us to take responsibility for our own healing as well as the healing of our communities.

-- Bruce Epperly, author of Process Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed and Become Fire: Guideposts for Interspiritual Pilgrims

Reading through the pages of Kling's inspiring book, I found myself digging into this remarkable treasure chest that she has opened, with valuable insights from Whitehead and Jung, dreams and religious tradition, all working together to produce something truly wonderful. Here is a work well worth reading, and then reading again!

-- C. K. Robertson, Canon to the Presiding Bishop for Ministry Beyond the Episcopal Church

Kling's "process spirituality" is based on Alfred North Whitehead's cosmology and Carl Jung's psychology. Jung's psychology, she holds, "is to the human psyche as Whitehead's metaphysics is to the cosmos." Her aim is to construct a spirituality that is robust, liberative, and transformative, helping us overcome modern fragmentation and that will produce more joy, more love, more compassion, and more wholeness for those who embrace it." Central to her program is the use of Whitehead and Jung in the service of dream work. Whereas she considers her project deeply Christian, she also calls it transreligious, because it is based on the "capacity for spirituality in every individual." Kling's Process Spirituality should become a path-breaking book.

-- David Ray Griffin, author of The Christian Gospel for Americans

This is a book with an important message for our time, written with great compassion and insight into the contemporary religious situation. We need religion, says Sheri Kling, but the old symbols and ideas of religion no longer work. Contemporary people need to be shown how to connect with them in new ways. To this end, she suggests we construct an experiential bridge to religion. Kling uses the religious philosophy of A.N. Whitehead and the spiritual psychology of C.G. Jung as our guides. She argues that Whitehead and Jung can be compellingly combined to achieve the task of religious renewal that neither system can achieve in isolation. The way forward, she indicates, is to connect the metaphysical with the ground of human experience. A Process Spirituality is as convincing as it is refreshing. 

-- David Tacey, La Trobe University; author of The Postsecular Sacred

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

​

Sheri D. Kling 

https://www.openhorizons.org/sheri-d-kling-whitehead-jung-and-psycho-spiritual-wholeness.html

Whitehead, Jung, and Psycho-Spiritual Wholeness

After having successfully defended my dissertation on Whitehead, Jung, and dream work as a spiritual practice for transformation at the Claremont School of Theology, I submitted two topics to the International Transpersonal Conference scheduled for September of 2017 in Prague. Its theme, “Beyond Materialism – Toward Wholeness,” fit well with my own research looking at the fragmentation in the U.S. caused I believe, at least in part, by the dualistic, mechanistic, and materialistic worldview within which we are living.

I believe strongly that the metaphysical cosmology of Alfred North Whitehead and the analytical psychology of Carl Gustav Jung are life-giving resources that can serve our psycho-spiritual wholeness well at this time in our history. This is even truer when combined with an authentic spiritual practice, such as dream work, that leads us to what I call embodied experiences of wholeness. The reason such embodied experiences are necessary is because simply assenting to any one of the many preferable worldviews available to us now, whether process philosophy/theology, panentheism, indigenous worldviews, ecofeminism, or similar relational cognitive frameworks is inadequate because we cannot think our way into a new way of being. We are facing a climate catastrophe that can end mammalian life as we know it on this planet. We are fragmented societally, interpersonally, and intrapersonally, and better ideas aren’t enough to get us to the transformation we need to live and relate to each other differently.

In Prague, I delivered a presentation entitled “'The Terrible Need for Metaphysics’: Answering Hillman’s Challenge through Whitehead”, along with a workshop discussing the relational-imaginal theory of dreaming I’ve developed.

Upon my return from Prague, Rosemarie Anderson, one of the founders of the field of transpersonal psychology and a fan of Whitehead invited me to submit an article for an upcoming issue of The Humanistic Psychologist focusing on transpersonal psychology. In that paper, “Whitehead’s Metaphysics as a Cosmological Framework for Transpersonal Psychology”, I make the case that Whitehead’s thinking can offer a solid framework for transpersonal psychology “because of his:

1. integration of subjective, objective, and transpersonal experience within one integrated cosmos,
2. argument that existence is made up of dynamic events that are both mental and physical,
3. unification of body and mind,
4. refusal to bifurcate subject and object within a relational reality,
5. validation of nonsensory perception as the basis for internal relations, and
6. description of a participatory cosmos of creativity and freedom where novelty, value, purpose, and transformation

are universally available realities.”

But what does all of this mean for those of us who are just trying to increase the amount of wholeness and flourishing, or what Whitehead called “zest” or “intensity of experience,” in our own lives and in the lives of others?

For many years, archetypal psychologist James Hillman had a deep aversion to metaphysics because he was focused on the human psyche alone. But when he heard physicist David Bohm admit “frankly and sadly” that “physics had released the world into its perishing” through the nuclear bomb, Hillman suddenly “saw the terrible need for metaphysics.” In a chapter of the book Archetypal Process: Self and Divine in Whitehead, Jung, and Hillman, Hillman wrote,

The internal needs of the soul require that its psychology meet the soul's concerns about the nature of the cosmos in which it finds itself…Soul seeks to understand itself beyond itself; it attempts, in a strangely persistent and universal way, always to fantasy beyond; otherwise, would we have the many sciences and philosophies, the theories of origins and ends? This paranoid restlessness of the soul to be metaphysically satisfied by ultimates of meaning must be acknowledged as one of its internal needs.

It is an internal need of the psyche/soul to understand itself in relation to the cosmos in which we live. When we engage Whitehead at the level of cosmos, engage Jung at the level of psyche, and embrace spiritual practices that foster embodied experiences of wholeness, we learn in our own deep experience that we are part of a primordial, transpersonal Reality that shows us that we matter, that we belong, and that we can experience positive change.

Speaking at the recent Haden Institute Summer Dream & Spirituality Conference in Hendersonville, NC, I wove together ideas from Whitehead, Jung, and also Fr. Richard Rohr (whose recent book The Universal Christ has been getting a lot of well-deserved traction) to talk about “The Whole-Making Nearness of God.” How can such ideas offer us hope in troubled times?

From a Whiteheadian perspective, we can understand God to be both near to us and actively involved in our wholeness because for each one of us, God is present to us, internal to us, in every moment of our existence, and offers us the creative possibilities that can move us out of our painful pasts into transformed futures. I believe that dream work is one practice we can use to discern those possibilities.

This is true no matter our place of birth, no matter our current or past circumstances, no matter if we believe a certain doctrine or not, no matter our gender, no matter the color of our skin or the content of our bank accounts. It is true for every one of us because this is how the world itself is continuously created. And the possibilities offered by God are always relevant for that moment. God offers us God’s self and God’s vision for our best outcome in every moment. God and God’s possibilities for our wholeness are as near to us as our next breath.

From a Jungian perspective, the “Unspeakable” primordial mystery at the base of all life is encounterable through the god-image in the psyche he called the Archetypal Self. And that Self works toward our wholeness as it draws us on a path of individuation in which we are given opportunities to integrate shadow material and novel possibilities by holding the tension between the opposing forces within us until our transcendent function kicks in, offering us something creatively transforming. This can often be experienced as a flow of grace.

We matter. We belong. And we can experience positive change because the Big Reality that we encounter at the base of our lives is seeking our wholeness and is encounterable within us. 

Kling singing at Haden Conference: @ Robert Haden

Sheri Kling “The Whole-Making Nearness of God”

Sheri's Music Blog/Vlog -
https://www.sherikling.com/works/music/

Abstract

Whitehead’s Metaphysics as a Cosmological Framework

for Transpersonal Psychology

Sheri D. Kling, University of the South

https://www.openhorizons.org/sheri-d-kling-whitehead-jung-and-psycho-spiritual-wholeness.html

​

"While it is tempting to eschew metaphysics in our postmodern and poststructuralist milieu, one of the reasons given for the founding of transpersonal psychology was a dissatisfaction with existing “person-centered” psychologies that “ignored placing human beings within a cosmic perspective” (Hartelius, Friedman, & Pappas, 2015, p. 44). Even more significantly, Grof (2015) sharply critiques those scientific approaches that take “leading paradigms for an accurate and definitive description of reality” and whose materialistic explanations of reality cannot account for recent observations in consciousness research.

This paper argues that the philosophy of organism of Alfred North Whitehead provides an effective metaphysical framework for transpersonal psychology because of his integration of subjective, objective, and transpersonal experience within one integrated cosmos, his argument that existence is made up of dynamic events that are both mental and physical, his unification of body and mind, his refusal to bifurcate subject and object within a relational reality, his validation of nonsensory perception as the basis for internal relations, and his description of a participatory cosmos of creativity and freedom where novelty, value, purpose, and transformation are universally available realities."

​God's Nearness and God's Wholemaking:
Springboards for Reflection 

Sheri Kling

https://www.openhorizons.org/sheri-d-kling-whitehead-jung-and-psycho-spiritual-wholeness.html

Christian Humanism - Educational Videos to Explore

Christian Humanism

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Christian_Humanism

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The parable of the Good Samaritan is often cited as an example of the humanist principle in Christian teaching.

Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles.

The ancient roots of Christian humanism may be seen in Jesus' teaching of the parable of the Good Samaritan and Saint Paul's emphasis on freedom from the external constraints of religious law, as well as the appeal to classical learning by the Christian apologists. Although its roots thus reach back to antiquity, Christian humanism grew more directly out of Christian scholasticism and Renaissance humanism, both of which developed from the rediscovery in Europe of classical Latin and Greek texts.

Renaissance humanism generally emphasized human dignity, beauty, and potential, and reacted against the religious authoritarianism of the Catholic Church. While Renaissance humanists stressed science and sensuality, Christian humanists used the principles of classical learning to focus on biblical studies, theology, and the importance of individual conscience, thus creating the intellectual foundations for the Protestant Reformation.

Later Christian humanists challenged not only the Catholic Church but the authority of the Bible itself and developed liberal Christian theology of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, stressing Jesus' humanity and the realization of God's kingdom in Christian community. The term today describes a variety of philosophical and theological attitudes, but tends to reject secularist ideologies which seek to eliminate religious discussion from the political arena.

Contents

• 1 Origins
• 2 Background
• 3 The Renaissance
• 4 The Reformation and beyond
• 5 Legacy
• 6 See also
• 7 References
• 8 Credits

Origins

Christian humanism can be seen as existing at the core of the Christian message. Jesus himself held the commandment, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" (Luke 10:27, Leviticus 19:18) to be essential. The parable of the Good Samaritan demonstrates this principle in action, stressing that even a member of a despised social class can embody true religion more than priests. Elsewhere, Jesus emphasized that charitable works such as feeding the hungry and caring for the sick are more important than mere acknowledgment of him as "Lord" (Matthew 25:34-40).

Justin Martyr

The writings of Saint Paul, the earliest Christian writer, may be interpreted as applying classical Greek ideas to traditional Jewish beliefs and thus developing a new religious philosophy. Paul emphasized the freedom of Gentile Christians from Jewish law and wrote of the liberty of the individual conscience in a personal relationship with God. A more direct type of Christian humanism can be seen in the second century, with the writings of Justin Martyr. Justin demonstrated the usefulness of classical learning in bringing the Christian message to a pagan audience, and also suggested the value of the achievements of classical culture itself in his Apology and other works.

Many years later, Church Fathers also made use of classical learning in developing Christian theology and explaining it to audiences in the Roman Empire. Apologists such as Origen engaged in dialogs with pagan writers and referred to classical texts to defend the Christian faith. The development of Logos theology, a critical phase in the evolution of the mature trinitarian doctrine, emerged from the application of Greek philosophical ideas to the Christian message. Later, influential writings of Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa, for example, confirmed the commitment to using pre-Christian knowledge, particularly as it touched the material world and not metaphysical beliefs.

Background

After the Muslim conquest, however, Greek learning was largely lost to western (Latin) Christianity. The rediscovery and translation of formally lost Greek texts in Europe, especially those of Aristotle, resulted in new approaches to theology.

Peter Abelard's work (early twelfth century), which emphasized the use of formal logic both to expose and reconcile contradictions in the writings of the Church Fathers, encountered strong ecclesiastical resistance, but also unleashed a powerful new spirit in theological studies. After a period of ecclesiastical reaction in which some aspects of classical learning were banned from theological discourse, writers such as Thomas Aquinas (thirteenth century) succeeded, though not without considerable difficulty, in establishing that Aristotelian principles could be used as an effective tool in expressing Christian theology.

The Renaissance

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

Both Christian and classical humanists placed great importance on studying ancient languages, namely Greek and Latin. Christian humanists also studied Hebrew, focusing on scriptural and patristic writings, Church reform, clerical education, and preaching. Whereas non-Christian humanism valued earthly beauty as something worthy in itself, Christian humanism valued earthly existence specifically in combination with the Christian faith. Christian humanism saw an explosion in the Renaissance, emanating from an increased faith in the capabilities of humanity, combined with a still-firm devotion to Christian faith.

One of the first great texts of the maturing Christian humanist tradition was Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man (c. 1486). However, the country of Pico's birth, Italy, leaned more toward civic humanism, while specifically Christian humanism tended to catch hold further north, during what is now called the Northern Renaissance. Italian universities and academia thus stressed classical mythology and literature as a source of knowledge, while the universities of the Holy Roman Empire, France, England, and the Netherlands applied classical learning more to the study of the Church Fathers and biblical texts.

Near the end of the fifteenth century, Johann Reuchlin became a champion for the humanist cause when he defended the right of Jews to read the Talmud and other Jewish works, which conservative Dominican intellectual leaders in Germany insisted should be banned as anti-Christian, prompting major debates between humanists and traditionalists in the great universities of Europe. Reuchlin's younger contemporary, Erasmus of Rotterdam, became the leading Christian humanist thinker of the era and completed the first New Testament in Greek in 1514. His work would come to play a major role in the theological debates of the early Protestant Reformation.

The Reformation and beyond

John Calvin

Erasmus

Christian humanism thus blossomed out of the Renaissance and was brought by devoted Christians to the study of the sources of the New Testament and Hebrew Bible. The invention of movable type, new inks, and widespread paper-making put virtually the whole of human knowledge at the hands of literate Christians for the first time, beginning with the publication of critical editions of the Bible and Church Fathers and later encompassing other disciplines.

Erasmus pioneered this movement with his work of publishing the New Testament in Greek, producing a firestorm of interest in the "original" text of the Bible. Martin Luther went even further by translating the scriptures into his native German, and arguing for the "freedom of Christian conscience" to interpret the scriptures without interference from the Catholic Church.

John Calvin, at the Sorbonne, began studying scripture in the original languages, eventually writing his influential commentary upon the entire Christian Old Testament and New Testament. Each of the candidates for ordained ministry in the Reformed churches in Calvinist tradition was required to study the Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek in order to qualify. In England, Christian humanism was influential in the court of King Henry VIII, where it came to play an important role the the establishment of the Church of England.

Meanwhile, Christian humanism continued to find advocates in the Catholic tradition as well. Erasmus, for example, remained a Catholic, and many of the leading thinkers of the Counter-Reformation were deeply immersed in Christian humanist thought. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, Christian humanism was the prevailing intellectual thought of Europe.

Legacy

John Locke

Fyodor Dostoevsky

As the primary intellectual movement which laid the foundation for the Protestant Reformation, the legacy of Christian humanism is immense. In subsequent decades and centuries, Christians continued to engage the historical and cultural bases of Christian belief, leading to a spectrum of philosophical and religious stances on the nature of human knowledge and divine revelation.

The Enlightenment of the mid-eighteenth century in Europe brought a separation of religious and secular institutions and challenged Christian faith in ever more radical ways. At the same time, the idea of God-given human rights beyond the authority of any government, initiated by the English philosopher John Locke and enshrined in the U.S. Declaration of Independence, represents a direct outgrowth of Christian humanist thinking.

Biblical criticism and the development of liberal theology in the late nineteenth century may also be seen as manifestations of the Christian humanist spirit. However, Christian humanism stops short of secular humanism, which seeks to divorce any religious discourse from public political debate. Indeed, Christian humanism emphasizes the need to apply Christian principles to every area of public and private life.

Today, the term "Christian humanism" is used widely to describe widely divergent viewpoints including those of such Christian writers as Fyodor Dostoevsky, G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Henri-Irénée Marrou, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

See also

• Christianity
• Humanism
• Personalism
• T.S. Eliot
• Erasmus
• Søren Kierkegaard
• Jacques Maritain
• Thomas More
• Blaise Pascal

References

• Bequette, John P. Christian Humanism: Creation, Redemption, and Reintegration. Lanham, Md: University Press of America, 2004. ISBN 9780761828075.
• D’Arcy, Martin C. Humanism and Christianity. New York: The World Publishing Company, 1969. OCLC 3888.
• Lemerle, Paul. Byzantine Humanism The First Phase: Notes and Remarks on Education and Culture in Byzantium from Its Origins to the 10th Century. Canberra: Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, 1986. OCLC 16808726.
• Oser, Lee. The Return of Christian Humanism: Chesterton, Eliot, Tolkien, and the Romance of History. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007. ISBN 9780826217752.
• Shaw, Joseph M. Readings in Christian Humanism. Minneapolis: Augsburg Pub. House, 1982. ISBN 9780806619385.

Renaissance Humanism and Christian Humanism

https://sites.google.com/a/stu.sandi.net/the-renaissance/humanism-and-christian-humanism

Renaissance Humanism is the study of subjects that are focused on the actions and abilities of humans. It emphasizes on human dignity, beauty, and potential.
Renaissance Humanism started in the late thirteen hundreds when scholars began to study different subjects from religion. The subjects they studied are known as humanities. Even though the humanists of the Renaissance learned subjects besides religion, they weren't any less religious. The start of humanism started due to the Europeans want for knowledge. The craving for knowledge was caused by the rediscovery of ancient texts that were thought to be lost.

Christian Humanism

Christian humanism is the belief human characteristics, such as freedom, individual conscience, and rational inquiry, are compatible with the teachings of Christianity. It is a combination of humanist and Christian ideas.

Christian humanists focused on biblical teachings, theology (the study of God's nature and religious belief), and the importance of individual conscience using the principals of classical learning. It was based on the humanity of Jesus and his teachings.

What Was Christian Humanism? AP Euro Bit by Bit #13

In this episode, I introduce the Christian. or Northern, Renaissance Humanist movement of the 16th century. I discuss its characteristics and examine the ideas of its two biggest thinkers, Desiderius Erasmus and Thomas More.

What Was the Renaissance? AP Euro Bit by Bit #1

In this video, I introduce you to the major changes that characterized the Renaissance in Europe. I will expand on these ideas in the next few videos.

What Was Humanism? AP Euro Bit by Bit #2

In this video, I describe the intellectual movement of humanism and profile four major figures of the movement: Petrarch, Lorenzo Valla, Marsilio Ficino, and Pico della Mirandola

What Was Secular Humanism? AP Euro Bit by Bit #3

In this video, I examine the secular humanist movement of the 15th century. I focus on the ideas and works of Leonardo Bruni, Leon Battista Alberti, and Niccolo Machiavelli.

What Was Civic Humanism? AP Euro Bit by Bit #4

This is an overview of civic humanism. In it, I highlight the contributions of Niccolo Machiavelli, Jean Bodin, Baldassare Castiglione, and Francesco Guicciardini.

Christian Humanism: Introductory Lecture

A seventy-four minute introduction to a semester-long course on Christian Humanism.  This episode focuses on the emergence of the concept of the Logos from Heraclitus to St. John's Gospel.

Christian Humanism Lecture: From St. Paul to Nietzsche

This second lecture of the semester is divided into, roughly, two parts.  Part one continues the first lecture, considering in details the implications of the Logos for dignity, equality, and liberty. I look at St. Paul, Cicero, and, briefly, St. Augustine. Part two considers the greatest (that is, most important) thinker of the nineteenth-century, the anti-humanist Friedrich Nietzsche.

Russell Kirk and Christian Humanism

A part of my Hillsdale College upper-level history course, Christian Humanism.  This episode considers Kirk's own Christian Humanism as he understood it in the 1950s. I also look at Kirk's definition of conservatism, asking the questions 1) what to conserve and 2) how to conserve. Very little in the way of biographer in this lecture.  That will be in the next one.

The Five Canons of Christian Humanism

In honor of Russell Kirk's definition of conservatism through the employment of six canons, I decided to define Christian Humanism through five.  This lecture--just a little over 30 minutes long--is the concluding lecture for my Hillsdale College upper-level history course, The Christian Humanist Vision of History.

More by Brad Birzer

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