As If the Heart Mattered: A Wesleyan Spirituality (Pathways in Spiritual Growth)

Rating:
Summary: Hospitality : a Heart Spirituality
Review: Clapper offers an approach to Wesleyan spirituality that moves beyond more parochial understandings of John Wesley and shows Wesley as one firmly grounded in the larger Christian traditions.

The image of "house" of religion is an important one to Clapper and offers a good sense of the true hospitality inherent in Christian spirituality. One does not think (normally) of a house as forbidding; rather, a house is a place that extends love and caring. So Clapper offers the Wesleyan image of the house of religion as a place where love and caring are inherent. Such hospitality comes from the heart of spiritual practice.

A good small-group study.

Rating:
Summary: commonsense spirituality
Review: Gregory Clapper uses fundamental and basic images, ones understandable at all reading levels, to impart a basic message of Christian spirituality. While the description may be basic, Clapper does not shortchange or simplify essential practices of faith. He writes of spiritual practices and invites readers to enter what he describes as the "house of faith," a very personal view of spirituality that is not in conflict with Orthodox understandings of corporate spirituality. His work will make sense to those in any Christian faith tradition.