Since the 1970's there has been a rising wave of interest among evangelical Christians in "spirituality," which has rightly drawn upon the ecumenical riches of church history, including the Desert Fathers and Cistercians. This series examines the period when modern evangelicalism itself arose from the perspective of this renewed in catholic spiritual theology. The classic works of John Wesley, Jonathan Edwards, John Newton and other authors were really eighteenth-century specimens of "spirituality." The purpose of this series is ultimately to ask what lessons we can learn today as we aspire to live by the gospel ourselves, seeking to achieve an authentically evangelical spirituality.

Bruce Hindmarsh is the James Houston Professor of Spiritual Theology at Regent College. Dr. Hindmarsh was a Pew research fellow at Oxford University from 1995-1997. He is author of John Newton and the English Evangelical Tradition: Between the Conversion of Wesley and Wilberforce.