During the late 20th Century, American evangelicals placed renewed emphasis on the spiritual disciplines through influential writings like Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline, Dallas Willard’s The Spirit of the Disciplines, and Donald Whitney’s Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life. These books, with combined sales in the millions, have exerted a generational influence regarding Christian spiritual practices in the church and the academy. Countless Christians have been trained to practice spiritual disciplines through these writings. Each of these influential books appeal to Scripture and history for warrants and examples of various spiritual disciplines, yet among these important works, creeds and confessions of faith receive scant attention.
As Christians mark the 1700th anniversary of the Nicene Creed, it is appropriate for evangelicals to consider afresh the role of such formal documents in the lived practice of the Christian life. Newer, longer, and narrower than the Church’s ecumenical creeds, confessions of faith may seem an unlikely source for spiritual reflection. How might an examination of such documents enrich our understanding and practice of spiritual disciplines?
This paper proposes turning to a 19th Century Baptist confession, The New Hampshire Confession, for a new (old) way of identifying and encouraging the practice of, and reflection on, spiritual disciplines. Among denominational confessions, New Hampshire is rare in that it names specific means of grace, provides a biblical grounding for each discipline, yet leaves space for broader practices. Its five-fold enumeration of Scripture, prayer, self-denial, self-examination, and watchfulness as key Christian practices is rich with possibilities for assessing the practices that Whitney, Willard, and Foster have suggested as normative disciplines. This paper argues that The New Hampshire Confession is an overlooked source of spiritual theology that offers terminological cohesion to contemporary reflection on the spiritual disciplines.