‘Soul Care’ Earns Willard Center Book Award
“Soul Care in African American Practice” by Barbara L. Peacock (InterVarsity Press, 2020) has won the annual book award from the Martin Institute for Christianity and Culture and the Dallas Willard Research Center (MIDWC) at Westmont College. She will speak in chapel on Wednesday, Sept. 21, at 10:30 a.m.
“Barbara Peacock’s book is a rich and loving reflection on the spiritual practices that ‘have been woven into the fabric of the African American culture.’” says Mark Nelson, Westmont’s Monroe professor of philosophy and director of the DWRC.
The author focuses on three practices — prayer, spiritual direction and soul care — manifested in the lives and thought of 10 African American men and women: Frederick Douglas, Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks, Darrell Griffin, Renita Weems, Harold Carter, Jessica Ingram, Coretta Scott King, James Washington and Howard Thurman.
“Peacock shows how these African American Christians forged their profound and distinctive approaches to these practices — often in bondage and oppression — to nourish a faith that can sustain the soul,” Nelson says.
Each chapter of “Soul Care'' concludes with questions for reflection and exercises in talking with God, hearing from God, visio divina (divine seeing) and prayer. “Peacock invites the reader to participate in these practices and experience them as conduits for God’s grace and love,” Nelson says. “Her book transforms as well as informs. Many books teach about spiritual formation; hers guides the reader into it.”
Christianity Today chose “Soul Care” for an Award of Merit in the Spiritual Formation category of its 2021 book awards.
Dallas Willard (1935-2013), a thinker and pastor, wrote more than a dozen books, including “The Spirit of the Disciplines” and “The Divine Conspiracy.” Now regarded as modern spiritual classics, these works have inspired thousands of ordinary Christians to become extraordinary Christ-followers, influencing an entire generation of writers and teachers regarding Christian spiritual disciplines and formation.
The MIDWC created the Annual Book Award Program in 2015 to help emphasize the enduring intellectual legacy of Dallas Willard by recognizing original written work sharing his vision. Willard considered invisible things such as soul, spirit and the Kingdom of God as part of reality and believed in the possibility of spiritual transformation, especially through spiritual practices and disciplines.