Thomas Kelly

Introducing the back story of the author of A Testament of Devotion, a Christian spiritual classic.

I can’t think of many books that have made more of an impact on me than A Testament of Devotion. I made that clear in the introduction to spiritual classics. You can get that article here:

Spiritual Classics

But I like the story behind the writing of the book at least as much as the book itself. And I do like the book!

Human stories are always complex, layered with nuances. At the same time, sometimes stories are simple and fairly direct. The more I read this spiritual classic, the more I have come to believe and see that the origin of the book is of the latter type. Here is a summary of how the book came to be written

Thomas Kelly never intended to write the five essays that became A Testament of Devotion. He aspired to be a philosopher. He intended to write philosophical tomes and teach in the best universities. His aspirations perhaps got the best of him and he suffered a brutal calamity. Several months into a potentially immobilizing disaster, he made a discovery. That discovery led to what eventually became A Testament of Devotion, one of the very few Christian spiritual classics ever written by an American author.

The fact that there are few spiritual classics written by American authors may be insignificant in our global community. We learn eagerly and willingly from women and men from any demographic and era. But it does tell you something about the spiritual climate of the U. S. It produces many more books about how to find your best life now from the genre of street-corner psychology. Many of these books end up on best seller lists. They provide some nuggets about how to do a few things a little better in your life. What they don’t do is open your heart to a deeper encounter with God who undoes you, reforms you, and restores you to his original intention for your life. Unfortunately, this street-corner psychology often gets more play in the American church pulpit than does the gospel of Jesus. Kelly will help with this!

Thomas Kelly wrote five essays in the first half of the 20th century that are from a different source, born both of calamity and practices breathed into him as a child of a particular form of Christian spirituality: Quaker spirituality.