Abstract
Most Christian teachers, whether in church or school contexts, would say that they desire their students to grow in conformity to the image of Christ. At the same time, teachers tend to draw upon a limited array of resources for help in this important task. While the literature on Christian teaching tends to look to social science theories and data-driven research, scholars and practitioners rarely look to the past to inspire new ways of envisioning the educational process. In Teaching for Spiritual Formation, however, Kyle R. Hughes wants his readers to reimagine Christian education through the eyes of the early church fathers. The Lower School Principal at the Stonehaven School in Georgia and a scholar of the early church, Hughes is well equipped to provide his readers with a patristic approach to teaching, learning, and curriculum planning. Though his focus is on Christian schools, the principles and practices he sets forth have much to teach those who work in the church or in Christian higher education.
Hughes's introduction lays out his rationale for appealing to the church fathers as a source of educational wisdom, noting that both their similarities and differences make them compelling conversation partners. Though living in a vastly different age, these ancient Christians faced the same challenge of learning how to “explain, live out, and pass on the Christian faith in the midst of a complex and ever-changing world, characterized by pluralism, syncretism, and materialism, grappling with the fallout from plagues, economic upheavals, and the mass migrations of peoples” (9). They saw the goal of Christian education as moving beyond knowledge acquisition to forming disciples of Jesus Christ, an aim Hughes would like contemporary teachers to embrace. And yet, because they lived in different times, these early fathers can also open our eyes to new questions, perspectives, and practices. He notes that looking to the past can “provide opportunities for expanding our imaginations” by helping us “shake loose some of our certainties about the ways things must be” (8). By focusing on the “ascetical spirituality” (10) of the early church (their recommended discipleship virtues and methods), Hughes hopes to open an untapped “spiritual treasure box from which we can draw” (9).
Teaching for Spiritual Formation progresses through five chapters that each ask a different question and focus on a particular church father. Chapter 2 asks, “Who Are We as Teachers?” and focuses on Gregory the Great, probing his writings on the necessary qualifications of spiritual leaders. Hughes looks at proper and improper motivations for teaching and the virtues and behaviors that should characterize those seeking to influence others through education. Focusing on the teacher's inner life, he uses Gregory's writings to demonstrate the need for both the active and contemplative life, balancing the busy life of ministry with space for silence, solitude, meditation on Scripture, healthy boundaries, and spiritual friendships. Hughes also speaks of the importance of seeing education as a kind of “spiritual direction” (30) in which teachers get to know their students, diagnosing their vices and recommending remedies as “physicians of the soul” (34). Teachers, he notes, must become “students of our students” (32), learning the art of “being with” them in conversation and prayer.
This theme leads directly into the focus question of chapter 3, “Who Are Our Students?” With Chrysostom as his guide, Hughes points to students’ inherent sinfulness and selfishness, but also to the possibility that they can be shaped into the image of Christ. Using Chrysostom's metaphors of training athletes, impressing the wax seal of the soul, and chiseling marble like a sculptor, Hughes speaks of teachers’ opportunity to be part of this formational and “counter-formational” (45) work in students’ lives. He also uses Chrysostom's metaphor of the soul as a “walled city” to stress the need for teachers to guard all of the sensory “gates” (speech, hearing, smell, sight, and touch) that influence the students’ embodied spiritual development. Part of this is instruction in avoiding immorality, but Hughes emphasizes the fact that this work is really about presenting students with “an alternative vision of the good life, one that is so compelling that their desire to live into that reality is greater than their desire for earthly pleasures” (62).
The next question, “What Are We Teaching?” shifts the focus from people (teachers and learners) to content (chapter 4). Drawing from Basil of Caesarea, Hughes points educators to the importance of inculcating both truth and virtue. He stresses the need for students to be exposed to “what is good, beautiful, and true” in both Christian and secular works (72). Stories, in particular, serve as helpful ways to introduce students to virtue and meaning, giving them exemplars to emulate and providing contexts for introducing “the most beautiful story of them all” (77). In this chapter, Hughes provides very helpful examples of how particular virtues can be expressed within a school's educational objectives. While describing what he hopes to see happen in students’ lives as they leave high school for college, for example, he speaks of developing a student who is a “truth finder, “creation explorer,” “order discoverer,” and “community builder,” to name just a few. Under each of these headings, he then describes what this would look like in cognitive, affective, and behavioral spheres (head, heart, and hands).
Chapter 5, entitled “How Are We Teaching?”, tackles the formative practices of the classroom and draws upon the writings of Benedict of Nursia. Beginning with “community and discipline,” Hughes addresses the need to create a community in which students learn from one another, care for each other, and build each other up in love, emphasizing collaboration over competition. Discipline, in such a context, focuses less on punitive measures and more on the ways in which student behavior harms the larger community and its covenantal aspirations. The focus here is on the spiritual practices of confession and repentance, disciplines that can also be modeled by teachers in their classrooms as they apologize for their own wrongdoings. Finally, Hughes emphasizes the importance of time and space in the educational process. Here he speaks to daily liturgical rhythms of memorization, recitation of scripture, creeds, and prayers, solitude and silence, service to the community, and following the cycle of the liturgical year. He also recommends the development of hospitable spaces for learning and discussion, recognizing that the “way in which we set up and arrange the physical spaces of our classrooms sends formative messages to our students” (111).
The final question, “How Do We Plan for Growth?”, is the subject of chapter 6 and employs the assistance of Cyril of Jerusalem. Utilizing the ancient catechumenate as his model, Hughes speaks of the need for a developmental space in which students—including those not yet Christians—can move towards discipleship to Jesus. Such a space, he argues, would take seriously instruction in the faith, turning the heart's desire toward God, and moving away from sin toward obedience (again focusing on head, heart, and hands). Hughes spends a good part of the chapter discussing how curricula can be designed to account for the importance of all three. For each outcome (say, helping students grow in prayer), the instructor can lay out objectives, strategies, and resources related to the head, the heart, and the hands in that particular area. The design steps listed here move from aims to strategies so that teachers can plan for cognitive, affective, and behavioral objectives and methods—a holistic formation graded to the students’ developmental needs.
Teaching for Spiritual Formation brings a unique and thoughtful historical perspective to the study of Christian education. By looking at teaching and learning through the lens of the early church fathers, it provides a helpful corrective to our presentism. Hughes does an admirable job of connecting the past to the present (at one point he notes that teachers might engage the stories of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to help students think about virtue and meaning), but he also wants the strangeness of the past to challenge our present assumptions. It is not that these authors from the first centuries are always correct in their educational thinking—they certainly had their own characteristic errors and blind spots. But they do ask different questions, notice different problems, and suggest different kinds of solutions. These differences have the potential to open our eyes to our unacknowledged norms, emphases, and presuppositions. What would happen if we thought more about the time-oriented rhythms of prayer or the church calendar in our classrooms? What would happen if teachers saw themselves as soul physicians? What would happen if teachers considered the various sensory “gates” to students’ souls? In learning about these formative practices that appear strange to our ears, hopefully contemporary Christian educators can begin to think in new ways about the development of disciples under their care.
There is little to critique in this well-written text. If anything, the book could have used a bit more historical context, introducing readers to the early church fathers and helping non-historians understand a bit more about their unique setting and the larger cultural issues that shaped their thinking. It also may have been helpful to link some of their wisdom directly to biblical texts, anchoring the historical reflections in scriptural principles and patterns. But overall, the book is a brilliant take on the ways in which our educational imaginations can be expanded by the wisdom and practices of these early Christian leaders. It is both thought-provoking and incredibly practical. I found myself marking sections in every chapter where I was challenged to think differently about my spiritual life as a teacher, my classroom practices and rhythms, and the ways I design curricula for intentional spiritual formation.
While the book is written for those who are working in Christian schools, Teaching for Spiritual Formation is a helpful text for anyone concerned about Christian education. The early church fathers Hughes draws upon were most concerned with education in churches, monastic settings, and families. In fact, one of the book's greatest strengths is that it demonstrates that teaching is ministry. It is soul care. The goal of all Christian education is discipleship, facilitating the formation of students into the image of Christ. If we see teaching this way, we will care about the person of the teacher, the holistic nature of students, the process of virtue formation, the communities in our classrooms, the importance of theological content, and the ways in which space, time, and various practices shape spiritual formation. In his conclusion, in fact, what Hughes proposes is that teachers develop a “rule of life” that encompasses their vision for themselves, their students, their curricula, their pedagogy, and their formational practices. Anyone interested in teaching and discipling will benefit greatly from such a holistic—and historically informed—approach to Christian education.