Spiritual direction is one of General’s most beloved and popular programs. The Center for Christian Spirituality, founded in 1976, has supported spiritual direction students for over forty years. But what is the history of the Center, and how did it help make General what it is today?

Anne Silver and Melissa Chim seek to answer these questions and many more in their upcoming textbook, History of the Center for Christian Spirituality. Through the generous funding of the Atla Invention Grant**, this textbook is an example of an OER, or Open Educational Resource. This means that this book will be free to use and easily accessible online! The book will be available in summer 2022, in just enough time to be added to the syllabi of the fall spiritual direction courses. It will be hosted through Atla (the American Theological Library Association) and made available through the General library catalog and website.

The textbook is divided into four chapters that start with why the collection is important from both a spiritual direction lens and a library perspective. They discuss how the Center was founded and evolved through the mid-1970s until 2001 where the archive ends. They also included an extensive appendix so you can see some of the most interesting documents firsthand!  A timeline and short biographies are available too for quick reference.

Silver and Chim divided the textbook according to their strengths. Silver’s thorough and excellent knowledge of the Center and spiritual direction as a whole was invaluable when writing each chapter. Chim’s contribution came from the library side – the textbook is based on 30 boxes of material in our special collections room. The Center for Christian Spirituality collection contains correspondence, brochures, syllabi, notes, and more from the Center’s founding until 2001. Documents from Margaret Guenther (author of Holy Listening) reveal her sense of humor on full display!

You are encouraged to come see the collection and experience living history for yourself. Please bookmark http://library.gts.edu/coming-soon-history-of-the-center-for-christian-spirituality-ebook/ for updates leading up to publication. Also available is a finding aid for the collection, which is a map of everything that’s available in the boxes along with key figures and dates involved. To make an appointment to see these materials, please send a message to Melissa Chim at library@gts.edu.

** Atla awarded the grant under the Atla OER Grant Program during the 2021-2022 cycle of funding. The goal of the Atla OER Grant Program is to encourage experimentation and innovation in finding new and potentially better and less costly ways to deliver learning materials to theological and religious studies students through OER.