Martyrs, Monks, and Mystics: An Introduction to Christian Spirituality

This book offers a wide-angle and yet integrative approach to Christian spirituality, engaging diverse historical traditions, incorporating recent developments in Asian, Africa, Latin America, and in global Pentecostalism, while displaying an essential unity in this topic in relation to a number of salient themes (e.g., love, humility, prayer, servanthood, etc.).

Though the book is geared toward students in college courses, it should also be of particular interest to practicing Christians across a very broad spectrum of traditions and denominations, and engages secular, Jewish, and Muslim readers, as well as those practicing one of the traditional Asian religions.

Endorsements

"McClymond's book could be the very best single-volume work on spirituality that I have read in sixty-two years of Jesuit life. He has written a brilliant tour de force with impressive and unimpeachable scholarship. His vast and sound knowledge of primary and secondary sources is combined with a solid historical, theological, and ecumenical sense. His compelling contemporary anecdotes and illustrations are a lively help to the reader."

—Harvey D. Egan, SJ, professor emeritus of systematic and mystical theology, Boston College

"Martyrs, Monks, and Mystics offers much more than an overview of Christian spirituality. Michael McClymond holds up its multiple expressions with such sensitivity and generosity that, for many readers, his book will serve the role of mystagogical guide. While accessible to non-experts, this book is at the same time remarkably thoughtful and comprehensive. McClymond's Martyrs, Monks, and Mystics is bound to become a classic in Christian spirituality."

—Hans Boersma, PhD, Nashotah House Theological Seminary

"For anyone interested in the history of spirituality, Michael McClymond's magisterial study of Christian spirituality is must reading. Solidly researched, this study of the vast scope of Christian spirituality—Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, ancient, medieval, and modern—is clearly written and informed by a profoundly biblically based point of view. Dr. McClymond has given us a book that promises to be the 'go to' book on the history and theology of Christian spirituality. Highly recommended."

—Ralph Martin, STD, director of graduate theology programs in the new evangelization, Sacred Heart Major Seminary, Archdiocese of Detroit

Michael J. McClymond is professor of modern Christianity at Saint Louis University. He was educated at Northwestern, Yale, and the University of Chicago, and has held teaching or research appointments at the University of California–San Diego, Emory, Yale, and the Universities of Birmingham (UK) and Berlin (Germany). He has written or edited works on Christian theology, comparative religions, and biblical studies, and his book The Theology of Jonathan Edwards won a theology/ethics "Book of the Year" award from Christianity Today.

†