85 - Practicing Christianity: Critical Perspectives for an Embodied Spirituality

Practicing Christianity:
Critical Perspectives for an Embodied Spirituality
By Margaret R. Miles
New York, Crossroad, 1988. 207 pp. $19.95.

In this book, the author, a professor at Harvard Divinity School, returns to questions of previous interest. She investigates the purposes and profit of ascetical practices, Christianity's profound ambiguity about persons' relationship with and attitudes toward their bodies, and three characteristics of contemporary North American culture, namely, pattern of socialization, effects of entertainment, and nuclear threat.

As an historical theologian with contemporary interests, Margaret Miles ably examines the way three key metaphors of Christian life-imitation of Christ, pilgrimage, and ascent-were employed in the most popular devotional manuals. She develops each theme through multiple examples of its use within a large body of literature. The assumptions and historical circumstances undergirding each image are critically analyzed. Most importantly, the author explains and interprets the practical outcomes in the life of historical people who attempted to cultivate a religious self based on these images. Finally, each theme is examined for its potential contributions and liabilities as a guide for contemporary persons envisioning and practicing Christian life. This section is followed by a similar analysis of practices of Christian life: asceticism, worship, service, and prayer. Finally, particular attention is given to the role of relationships and bodily joy and suffering in Christian life. In her section on asceticism, the author shifts her position from her earlier work on this topic, Fullness of Life, and abandons her project of retrieving a positive approach to asceticism.

The strengths of this treatment are many. It is a rare and successful attempt in historical theology, not only offering a lucid interpretation of historical lay persons' understandings and practices of committed life, but also making helpful connections that can enhance attempts of contemporary Christians to practice the faith they profess. The author carefully raises questions about gender that permeate this devotional tradition. And she surveys an amazing range of devotional texts drawing from all the Christian traditions.

It is just this diversity combined with the author's critical perspective that leaves the reader confused about how to shape one's own response to Christian life and practice. Because the author envisions no single denominational community, the reader is confronted with the diversity created by the differing weights each community gives to a particular theme or practice. The critical analysis is so balanced that no specific set of practices is wholeheartedly advocated due to the very "mixed" blessing she discovers Christian tradition to be in the light of contemporary experience. Although the role of practices for resisting the effects of

86 - Practicing Christianity: Critical Perspectives for an Embodied Spirituality

socialization is carefully described, insufficient attention is given to the way specific Christian churches may develop a religiously socialized self in its adherents that may be no great improvement in freedom or action over a secular form of such socialization.

What emerges with great clarity is the encouragement and necessity to live an "examined life," to adopt practices choicefully that foster the development of a religious self in contrast to a passively accepted socialized self, to counter the effects of our entertainment culture, and so to engage with this world that one can resist the habits of thought and action that have resulted in the threat of global destruction. Margaret Miles astutely provides the reader with questions and a method of reflection to apply to one's own life and practice. Her analysis will be appreciated by the scholar, and her treatment of questions of practice will be helpful to those who minister to the faith life of adults.

Janet K. Ruffing
Fordham University
Bronx, New York