The aim of this research project was to explore the training, experience and knowledge which are necessary to offer spiritual companionship. I wished to research this particularly in relation to women, since women historically have been invisible in many religious faiths, their voices unheard, and their stories unwritten, and because of my own experience of struggle within the institutional church. The research methodology was a bricolage of heuristic enquiry, organic enquiry, and person-centred enquiry. Thirteen women were interviewed face to face using semi-structured interviews, including seekers, participants from training courses, and trainers. The interviews were transcribed and participants were invited to amend or clarify any points they were concerned about. The data was analysed into themes which emerged from the data. The participants had the opportunity to read the draft of the data presentation and ask for changes. The main themes are presented alongside my own process, reflections, poetry and art work relating to that and to the processing of the data, and also interwoven with quotes from the diaries of Etty Hillesum. The themes identified are the process of finding a spiritual companion, the need not to be directed, the quality of the spiritual director’s presence, issues of power, trust and risk, issues around holding or failing to hold boundaries, the boundary with friendship, and the nature of the experience needed by the spiritual companion. The needs of women in this relationship are explored, and the contribution of the person-centred approach is considered. The conclusions are that this is a complex relationship which requires commitment on the part of the spiritual companion to their own spiritual growth, alongside a person-centred approach to being alongside the seeker, and also a sophisticated awareness of the issue of appropriate boundaries, with particular reference to the needs of women.

Food was a significant element in the maintenance of religious identity in late medieval and early modern Valencia. This is clear fl:om an examination of Jewish, Christian and Muslim scripture and legislation which presented the ideal relationship between religious groups and their own food. Such ideas also offered a method of maintaining one's own religious identity while providing separation fl·om members of different groups. Yet the reality was somewhat different. Through an examination of fifteenth-century legislation and civil lawsuits we can understand how religious identity was influenced and changed by the realities of living in a multi-faith community. Religious identities were enacted in the meat markets, where animals were turned into religiously significant food. The liminal spaces of animals' lives served to highlight the discrepancy between idealised forms of slaughter and the necessities of meat provision. This community was transformed by the establishment of the Inquisition and the expulsion of the Jews from Valencia at the end of the century. Throughout this period, food remained an important marker of identity among those converted fl:om Judaism to Christianity, the conversos. Women, in particular, were vital in the maintenance of Jewish food identity despite the threat posed by Inquisitorial activity. By the middle of the sixteenth century, Inquisitors had turned their attention to converts from Islam, the moriscos. Ritual slaughter and fasting practices among the converts were of concern to the Inquisition and significant efforts were made to re-educate them in the Christian faith through catechisms and Inquisitorial prosecutions. Undoubtedly, food was a vital element in religious identity. Strict guidelines and legislation, while offering a view of the idealised world, stand in contrast to the changeable and negotiable forms of religious food identity.

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The general claim of the thesis is that the exercise and development of skills and capacities related to sensory perception can contribute positively to the process commonly referred to as spiritual formation. The dynamics of aesthesis and ascesis can be perceived as existing in a symbiotic relationship, encouraging and reinforcing the potentials of the other toward the development of a vibrant, discerning Christian spirituality. The arts can help mediate this relationship, and in doing so can be said to catalyze these dynamics. In order to maximize the catalytic potentials of the arts for lay formation, a definition of art is employed that identifies art as the result of a combination of craft, content and context. Accent is placed on the communicability and cognitive cogency of art in this analysis. In order to argue for the moral and spiritual efficacy of the arts, resources from aesthetics, ethics and human development theory as appropriated within practical theology are explored. A variant on virtue ethics that emphasizes the morally-formative potential of narrative is highlighted as the correlative to the claim that works of art can be seen as conveyers through which an ‘inhabitable' sense of worldview, the truth-claims of which are insinuated effectively or ineffectively according to the relative strength of the artistic utterance. It is through the inhabitation or indwelling of the story so conveyed that art exerts its spiritually formative influence.

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How can we preach on current political and social issues without simply adding Christ’s name to a political philosophy? More precisely, how can those who claim the heritage of Luther and the early Reformation do this? Luther withdrew from advocacy for the poor around 1525, and central parts of his theology (and the tradition that bears his name) emerged only after this withdrawal. This article argues that Luther’s theology of preaching, which conceived of proclamation as part of the Trinitarian economy, provides a doctrinally sound method for preaching on matters of social justice. After establishing the early Luther’s record on advocacy founded in the commandment to love neighbor and assessing reasons for Luther’s about face on poor relief in 1525, the article examines Luther’s understanding of preaching as “perichoretic,” part of the movement of the Trinity. As such, preaching joins in God’s mission to move people to acts of love of neighbor, sometimes acts that constitute great personal or material risk.

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This paper examines a new English translation of John Calvin’s sermon on Micah 2:1 by the author, and it explores the sermon’s themes of justice and equity within Calvin’s historical context of Geneva in 1550. An exploration of homiletical influences on the sermon includes consideration of Calvin’s development of “plain sense” preaching. “Plain sense” preaching in Calvin’s writing denotes a rhetorical and exegetical style that draws upon his careful study of John Chrysostom’s sermons, and his attempt in his French-language 1541 Institutes to relate covenant theology to preaching of Old Testament texts. The judgments of the prophet Micah demand the same repentance from ancient Israel, sixteenth-century Geneva, and even contemporary hearers. The paper concludes with reflection on how Calvin’s “plain sense” preaching speaks to matters of justice with respect to mistreatment of immigrants and refugees in a contemporary North American context.