The Way exists to present spirituality to its readers in a contemporary, accessible fashion. In this year’s special issue, marking the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, writers from different Christian traditions reflect on how the work of Ignatius Loyola has helped to shape their own faith and life of discipleship.
Beth Dickson, ‘All Unawares: Evangelical Spirituality as a Preparation for the Ignatian Encounter’, 9–20
Coming from an evangelical background, it was the idea of consolation that first struck Beth Dickson when she encountered Ignatian spirituality. Later on she discovered that her own evangelical spirituality had prepared her well to appreciate other Ignatian concepts and insights. She offers here an account of the path of these discoveries.
Robert Opala, ‘Martin Luther’s Conversion Experience and the Mid-life Transition’, 21–32
Many psychologists have found themselves fascinated by the figure of Martin Luther, and have been led to identify elements in his character and personality that may have prompted his role in initiating the Protestant Reformation. Robert Opala suggests that contemporary investigation of the transitions that occur in mid-life may cast fresh light on such questions.
Hugh Jenkins, ‘A Pilgrimage through Methodism and Ignatian Spirituality’, 33–44
Contemporary Methodism recognises a ‘Wesleyan quadrilateral’ in the teachings of its founder, by which spiritual experience, scripture, tradition and reason together form the basis of authority. Hugh Jenkins, a South African Methodist, found this a useful framework leading him to a deeper understanding of discernment, as it is presented in Ignatian spirituality.
Nicolas Stebbing, ‘Anglicans and Ignatius’, 45–50
On first encountering Jesuits, Nicolas Stebbing, an Anglican religious priest, wondered whether they would be ‘steely-eyed fanatics, full of counter-reformation zeal’. What he found instead drew him more deeply into ecumenism, and to becoming a giver of the Spiritual Exercises in his own right. He speaks of a journey confirmed by the election of Francis, the first Jesuit Pope.
Steffan Mathias, ‘An Anglican Journey with Ignatius’, 51–56
Steffan Mathias is, like Nicolas Stebbing, a member of the Anglican Community of the Resurrection. He is in his final year of preparation for ordination and was recently directed through the Spiritual Exercises by Nicholas. Here he describes some of the results of this process on his experience of feeling called to Anglican ministry.
Victor Houliston, ‘‘Consideration’ in English Reformation Spirituality: Robert Persons’s Book of Resolution and Christian Directorie (1582–1585)’, 57–71
Robert Persons is best known as the man who planned and implemented the first Jesuit mission to England, at the end of the sixteenth century. In his own day he was also famed as the author of a devotional manual, the Book of Resolution. This work had an influence on Catholics and Protestants alike, as Victor Houliston shows here.
Jnis Vanags, ‘God’s ‘Plan B’: The Spiritual Exercises through the Eyes of a Lutheran’, 72–81
The Lutheran archbishop of Riga, Jnis Vanags, first discovered the Spiritual Exercises in a samizdat photocopy, purchased illegally in a forest near Riga during Soviet times. Even now, the name of Ignatius Loyola is suspect among some in his Church. His only answer is to recount his own experience, which leads him to reflect: ‘I was amazed at how Lutheran the Spiritual Exercises are’.
Norman Russell, ‘St Nikodemos the Hagiorite and the Spirituality of the Catholic Reformation’, 83–95
Roman Catholics can tend to think of the Eastern Orthodox Church as having been relatively untouched by the upheaval of the Reformation. Yet, Norman Russell argues here, its effects were actually profound. He traces them in the life and work of an eighteenth-century Orthodox monk and theologian, St Nikodemus the Haghiorite.
E. Adam Wells, ‘The Impact of Ignatian Spirituality on British Methodism’, 97–108
The widespread rediscovery of the Spiritual Exercises in their individually-guided form coincided, in the early 1970s, with the birth of a retreat movement within the Methodist Church. This in turn led to Methodists recognising aspects of Ignatian spiritual direction in the ministry of John Wesley. Adam Wells here outlines some of this history in the Methodist movement over the last forty years.
Alan Kolp, ‘Reformation as Spiritual Innovation’, 109–118
The story of Martin Luther kick-starting the Reformation by nailing his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg is too iconic to be easily rejected. Yet the reality was surely more complex. Now, five centuries later, it is becoming more possible to come to a sense of what the Spirt of God might have been doing through the upheaval of those years, a path Alan Kolp traces here.
Johannes Pedersen, ‘Ignatian-Inspired Spirituality in a Scandinavian Ecumenical Setting’, 119–128
Most Christians identify with a particular denomination. Yet Ignatian spirituality seems to have the capacity to work across these divisions, and even influence those who think of themselves as entirely denominational. Johannes Pedersen describes how he a