The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition was published by HarperSanFrancisco in 2005, and it represents Smith’s attempt to do for Christianity what The World’s Religions had done for Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam: to present it from the inside, at its best, as a lived spiritual tradition rather than a set of doctrines or an institutional structure.
Smith’s thesis is that Christianity’s “soul” — its transformative spiritual core — has been progressively obscured by historical accretions: theological controversies, institutional power struggles, political alliances, and the culture wars of modern America. What remains when these are stripped away is an experience of radical love, a vision of reality as ultimately gracious, and a practice of self-transcendence that has the power to transform individual lives and entire communities.
The book distinguishes between the “Christian worldview” (the metaphysical picture of reality that Christianity implies) and “Christian practice” (the disciplines through which that vision is realized in individual lives). Smith is more interested in the former than the latter — he is a philosopher of religion, not a spiritual director — but he insists that the worldview is meaningless apart from the practice: Christianity is not primarily something to be believed but something to be lived.
Collecting The Soul of Christianity
First edition (HarperSanFrancisco, New York, 2005): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First edition in dust jacket: $10–$25
- Without jacket: $3–$8