Spiritual Exercises for a Secular Age by Ryan G. Duns, S.J.
At its annual convention on June 3, the College Theology Society announced that Ryan G. Duns, S.J., assistant professor of theology at Marquette University, received the 2021 CTS Best Book Award for Spiritual Exercises for a Secular Age: Desmond and the Quest for God (University of Notre Dame Press, 2020). The award committee called Duns’s book, a “work of high theological and historical scholarship with a creative and original approach.”
The CTS award committee announced that Spiritual Exercises for a Secular Age stood out among a competitive field as this year’s Best Book Award winner. The book offers a readable and engaging introduction to the thought of Charles Taylor and William Desmond, and demonstrates how practicing metaphysics can be understood as a form of spiritual exercise that renews in its practitioners an attentiveness to God in all things. The award committee wrote, "Approaching Desmond’s philosophy in this way, [Duns] convincingly demonstrates, can help the willing reader to cultivate an attitude in which the question of the Transcendent can be 'resurrected.'"
The CTS Best Book Award was established in 1970. Previous winners include Thinking Prayer: Theology and Spirituality amid the Crises of Modernity by Andrew Prevot (University of Notre Dame Press, 2015).
Ryan Duns was recently interviewed on The Side View about Spiritual Exercises for a Secular Age and discusses his contemplative practices and insights. The interview is available here as a Podcast or here on YouTube.
Spiritual Exercises for a Secular Age is available in hardcover and digital editions from the University of Notre Dame Press. For more information about the book, contact: Kathryn Pitts, pitts.5@nd.edu, 574.631.3267