Book Review: Spiritual Guidance across Religions: A Sourcebook for Spiritual Directors and Other Professionals Providing Counsel to People of Differing Faith Traditions

Abstract

Spiritual Guidance across Religions: A Sourcebook for Spiritual Directors and Other Professionals Providing Counsel to People of Differing Faith Traditions. Edited by John R. Mabry. Woodstock, Vt.: Skylight Paths Publishing, 2014. 384 pp. $50.00 (cloth).John Mabry has assembled a marvelous collection of chapters from twenty-four traditions, offering for spiritual caregivers who have occasion to work in interfaith contexts. His charge to each contributor was to offer to a caregiver preparing to work with a from outside her own tradition everything she needs [to feel] ready to meet with her client (p. ii). Though somewhat uneven in quality, the chapters for the most part a long way toward satisfying Mabry's charge. Taken collectively, they comprise a remarkable resource for caregivers across the entire spectrum of ministry professionals, from congregational ministry to chaplaincy to pastoral counseling to spiritual direction, not to mention those working outside of contexts traditionally thought of as ministry.The collection organized mostly by the geographical regions from which each tradition first emerged: Native (in this instance from several different parts of the world), Chinese, Indian, and Middle Eastern. A separate section includes chapters from five Christian denominations, and another treats Interfaith, Humanist, and Eclectic traditions. If read only with an eye to comparative religious study, the book a wonderful review for those who may have been immersed in one context for some time, and a reminder of the great richness and variety of humanity's spiritual, religious, and philosophical output. Further, as chapters written from the standpoint of active practitioners, many subtle glimpses are offered inside the culture and felt experience of traditions that may be completely outside the reader's personal or academic background. The value of reading the volume with this in mind immense; one certainly need not wait to use it as a practical resource.The book intended, though, as a sourcebook for practitioners, and it this same journey inside the world of each tradition that makes it most valuable. To cite just a few examples: Luisah Teish, contributor of the luminous chapter Insights into the Spiritual Culture of the African Diaspora, explains that people in this tradition believe that one enters and reenters the world (ile aiye) through a specific family line. . . . Within this system we created a culture based on the extended family. This network of relationships, Teish notes, is very different from the property-oriented nuclear family of the West (p. 8). John Jilhons, in another of the strongest chapters, this one on Eastern Orthodoxy, uses the formula go to church, say your prayers, remember God to outline a deceptively simple and clear threelegged stool for spiritual guidance within his tradition (p. …