The Martin Institute for Christianity and Culture and the Dallas Willard Research Center at Westmont College are working to help establish Christian spiritual formation as a domain of publicly available knowledge. One element of this work is the annual Dallas Willard Book and Article Award, which was created in 2015.

The focus of this effort is to recognize publications that in some way advance one or more of Dallas Willard’s four primary concerns. Each year a variety of books and research articles are nominated and reviewed by a panel of judges. A list of finalists are compiled and one winner in each category (book and research article) are named.

If you have ever wondered about other thinkers who are working on these sorts of topics at a similar level of sophistication as Willard, the list of book and article award winners below are worthy of your attention.

In this week’s issues of Conversatio Divina, we want to call your attention to the finalists for the article award category, and then to feature a book chapter by this year’s winner, Mark K. Spencer, PhD.

We call your attention to the following:

1. A listing of all of the finalists in the research article division (below)
2. A “lightning-round” interview of Mark Spencer, by our own Mark Nelson, the director of the Dallas Willard Research Center
3. The winning article by Dr. Spencer, titled: “Value perception and Spiritual Perception,” which appeared as a chapter in Perceiving Things Divine: Towards a Constructive Account of Spiritual Perception, F. D. Aquino and P. L. Gavrilyuk, eds. (Oxford University Press, 2022)

You may also want to check out Mark’s recently released book, The Irreducibility of the Human Person: A Catholic Synthesis.

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Martin Institute Dallas Willard Research Center: Top 5 Finalists for 2023

William J. Abraham, ”Radical Evil and Spiritual Perception,” in Perceiving Things Divine: Towards a Constructive Account of Spiritual Perception, F. D. Aquino and P. L. Gavrilyuk, eds. (Oxford University Press, 2022).

Kevin D. Dougherty, Perry L. Glanzer, Jessica A. Robinson, Juliette L. Ratchford, and Sarah A. Schnitker, “Baylor Faith and Character Study: Methods and Preliminary Findings,” in Christian Higher Education, 21(3), accessed October 25, 2023.

Timothy J. Pawl, “The Psychology of Habit Formation and Christian Moral Wisdom on Virtue Formation,” in TheoLogica, 7(1), 2023, accessed October 25, 2023.

David Setran, “The ‘Love-Tokens’ of God: Richard Baxter on Cultivating Love of God through Earthly Pleasures,” in Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care, 15(2), 2022, accessed October 25, 2023.

Mark K. Spencer, “Value Perception and Spiritual Perception in Max Scheler,” in Perceiving Things Divine: Towards a Constructive Account of Spiritual Perception, F. D. Aquino and P. L. Gavrilyuk, eds. (Oxford University Press, 2022).