J. Matthew Ashley Joining JST-SCU's Faculty as Professor of Christian Spirituality
Dr. Ashley is originally from Colorado, and he looks forward to experiencing the beauty of the California mountain- and seascapes. For the past thirty-six years he has lived in the Midwest, first in Chicago, where he earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago Divinity School in 1993, and since then, in South Bend, Indiana, where he has been on the faculty of the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. Dr. Ashley is both humbled and excited to join the community of scholarship, prayer, and service to the Church at JST-SCU, where he can continue to pursue an interest in spirituality in its intersections with theology—Ignatian spirituality in particular—that has been growing over the decades as he has taught and written on figures such as Johann Baptist Metz, Gustavo Gutiérrez, Karl Rahner, Óscar Romero, Ignacio Ellacuría, and Pope Francis. He hopes to share his love for the powerful, moving and theologically dense texts of figures such as Ignatius, Julian of Norwich, Catherine of Siena, the great seventeenth-century Carmelites and more. He also looks forward to learning, in an international community, how these beautiful traditions have enriched and been enriched by the lived faith of Christians in the many “peripheries” of our global church.
When not thinking about the future of Christianity’s spiritual traditions in a diversified, global church, he enjoys running, playing his clarinet and spending time with his wife and three adult children. He is looking forward to teaching, working, and participating in the life of Santa Clara University and JST-SCU.