Spiritual Direction among the Protestants

Abstract

For various reasons spiritual direction since the Reformation has been associated more closely with the Roman church than with Protestant traditions. To a large degree this assumption is valid. The Reformation era saw the role of the spiritual director often wedded to that of the confessor; the Protestant deemphasis on sacerdotal powers, particularly those exercised in confession, led many Protestants to grant less attention to spiritual direction. On the eve of the Reformation spiritual direction was found mainly within religious orders; since Protestant churches disavowed monasticism, they had de facto eliminated spiritual direction’s chief locus of operation. Jesuits advocated spiritual direction; Protestants were bitterly anti-Jesuitical. Sixteenthcentury spiritual direction literature in the Roman tradition talked at length about the stages and levels of development in the spiritual life; Protestants avoided references in their literature that reinforced privileged class terminology employed by the clerical estate. Finally, Romans retained and continued to produce great spiritual masterpieces that were the basis of their spiritual direction; Protestants immersed themselves in Scripture, theology, and organization, and only rarely in spirituality.