Synopsis: For many Christians, spirituality and ethics are in separate mental and experiential compartments. Spirituality may be understood as an inner experience, while ethics is focused on decisions or positions on issues. Both of these views reduce spirituality and morality in Christian faith and practice, and ignore the centrality of desire for God and the things of God as key focal points for spiritual and moral formation. These aspects of Christian formation must be located in their scriptural and theological contexts in order to understand more fully what God desires for human life. This focus on desire provides content and context to Christian spirituality and morality. We are drawn outward to focus on God and the good of others while we learn to embody virtues, such as compassion, courage, self-control, gratitude, humility, and hope. Practices are crucial ways by which we learn to incarnate our ultimate desire of love for God and for what God desires in the pursuit of justice and goodness for all creation. In so doing, practices enable us to more fully integrate spiritual and moral growth in the processes of our desire for God and the things of God. Endorsement: "This is a welcome and overdue proposal for a moral Christian spirituality and a spiritually-rooted and energized Christian social engagement. With winsome wisdom, the author illuminates the reciprocating links between authentic experience of God and its embodiment (and further development) in active moral life. Properly ordered desire, she reveals, is the glue that re-bonds these too-often-divorced dimensions back together in a Christ-like wholeness. Protestants especially need this book " --Glen G. Scorgie Professor of Theology and Ethics Bethel University "In this thoroughly documented new book, Wyndy Corbin Reuschling argues that the reordering of desires, for which Christian discipleship aims, depends upon overcoming a huge gap commonly thought to separate private spirituality from social ethics. Through close reading of three pairs of historical Christian practices, Corbin Reuschling winsomely shows that in Christian thought, spirituality and morality have always been two sides of one coin. What this coin buys for the reader is a highly practical and hope-filled account of both a Christian spiritual formation that is communally incarnated and a Christian social ethics that actually deepens one's personal relationship with God." --Brad J. Kallenberg Professor of Theology University of Dayton "In a post-Christian society, secularization has created a decisive separation between spirituality and Christian virtues and has reinforced individualistic expressions of faith that lead people 'to go through the motions' without transformation. Desire for God and the Things of God provides an excellent response to these and other fragmented situations by offering practical alternatives grounded in community- and character-forming practices that reflect an integral expression of the Christian faith and by challenging us to reconsider the implications of Christian living and spirituality." --Hugo Magallanes Associate Professor of Christianity and Cultures Perkins School of Theology Author Biography: Wyndy Corbin Reuschling is Professor of Ethics and Theology at Ashland Theological Seminary in Ashland, Ohio. She is author of Reviving Evangelical Ethics: The Promises and Pitfalls of Classic Models of Morality (2008) and coauthor of Becoming Whole and Holy: An Integrative Conversation about Christian Formation (2010).

"Combining appreciation and critique, Wyndy Corbin Reuschling skillfully teases out the particular dynamics at work in the moral thinking of many evangelicals. By carefully analyzing the impact of several moral traditions on evangelicalism, she invites readers into a fuller recognition of the shaping power of scripture and Christian community, and into more robust practices of Christian discipleship. This book is an important contribution to understanding and strengthening evangelical ethics."--Christine D. Pohl, Asbury Theological Seminary

"This book honors evangelical commitments to the authority of scripture, to a personal relation with Jesus, and to evangelism. But it challenges some of the ways evangelicals have brought those commitments to bear on Christian ethics, and it suggests better ways, ways that might indeed revive evangelical ethics."--Allen Verhey, Duke University

"Wendy Corbin Reuschling's text provides a fresh, insistently self-critical study of the construction of evangelical ethics offered by an evangelical 'insider.' Her personal honesty and thought-provoking analysis makes this a compelling and timely basic resource on the content of Christian ethics."--Traci C. West, Drew University Theological School

"Evangelical writers in the field of social ethics have for too long given only narrow slices of God's rich and complex vision for how we are to live. At last here is a book that helps us see the limitations of evangelical ethics built on Aristotelian, Kantian, and Millian ethical reflection. Corbin Reuschling deconstructs current evangelical approaches to Christian social ethics in order to construct a truly biblical vision of what it is to be a people ofGod."--Alice Mathews, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary

""Reviving Evangelical Ethics" offers an appreciative but rigorous critique of the ways that classical moral theory has limited ethics to reflection on the demands of duty, the achievement of certain results, or personal virtue. This important book redefines the boundaries of evangelical ethics in salutarily progressive ways, while raising timely cautions concerning the therapeutic models of spiritual formation that further inhibit the development of the social dimension of Christian ethics."--David A. deSilva, Ashland Theological Seminary

"An important book for evangelicals. It seeks nothing less than a fresh, biblical, and formational direction in evangelical ethics. The book carefully assesses common contemporary evangelical stances and points the biblical and theological way forward toward truly evangelical ethics. It is a delightfully written, insightful book and deserves a wide reading."--Robert L. Hubbard, North Park Theological Seminary

How does Christian formation happen and what are its moral implications? This book brings into conversation three disciplines that are crucial for Christian formation--social science, biblical studies/hermeneutics, and ethics--to present a cohesive, dynamic vision of human wholeness and spiritual holiness. The authors weave together insights from their respective fields to address the relationship between personal and communal formation, moral development, and the interpretation of Scripture. Revealing the process as well as the fruits of interdisciplinary dialogue, this book offers a fresh approach to understanding human formation. The final chapter, a case study on immigration, demonstrates the authors' integrative method.