History of the Center for Engaged Compassion and the Christian Compassion Cultivation Training

History of the Center for Engaged Compassion and the Christian Compassion Cultivation Training

(Excerpted from "The Compassion Renaissance: Science, Mind & Spirit")

Richard K. Stephens

December 17, 2021

3,696 words / 13.2 minutes

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1) Toward a Neuroscience-Informed Christian Compassion Practice

It is now accepted, data-supported, fact that compassion can be taught. The task at hand now is the fine-tuning of teaching methods.

At the center of the science of compassion is the discovery that humans are – as Daniel Goleman famously phrased it twenty-six years ago in his book, Social Intelligence (2006) – “hardwired for compassion.” [36] With this in mind, we understand that its cultivation is not at all a matter of introducing, or constructing, something novel, but rather is a process of uncovering and strengthening something that is inherent, by learning how to uncover it by curbing those mental functions that interfere with one’s command of the already-present compassion faculty.

Mark Yaconelli, Compassion Retreat (Center for Engaged Compassion), May 2013

In terms of Christian theology, this understanding is consistent with the concept of following Christ by deliberately acting to transform one’s heart through a process of restoring it to the Image of God – which was its state before the Fall. Before the Fall, before the free choice was made to disobey God, the created human was at home and was fully competent in the created world. The goal of Christian transformative contemplation is to retrieve the memory from the deep recesses of the mind and to restore, as much as is achievable, that unfallen condition. In other words, the hardwired compassion potentiality that scientists have discovered is, in Christian terms, the lingering, somewhat occluded God-like “image,” and this image can be retrieved through developing the necessary skill to curb self-centered fear and self-interest, qualities of mind which short-circuit compassion processes.

Within many Christian traditions, however, that faculty which neuroscience now shows is a necessary foundation for growing the compassion capability has been allowed to atrophy: to atrophy both doctrinally and anatomically.

Self-loathing has, in many strands of Christianity, become a perverse replacement for awareness of sin followed by the transformative engagement that is what prayer is supposed to be and which is the means by which one becomes “reborn.”

Yet self-compassion is a mandatory Christian requirement that grows out of the crucial transformative process of choosing to radically change one’s mind – which is the actual meaning of the Greek word metanoia (inadequately translated as “repentance”). “Radically alter your mind!” (“Metanoeite!”) is the first command Christ makes in his ministry. [37]

Acceptance of the forgiveness proffered by Christ correlates with the capacity for “self-compassion.” After all, Christ’s “second greatest command” – to love your neighbor as yourself – which is interconnected with the greatest command, to “love God all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind,” is meaningless if one loathes oneself, is lacking in self-knowledge, and feels psychically unequipped to overcome banal selfishness.

2) The Christian Compassion Practice

When we bring into this core theological consideration – the command to transform one’s mind – the awareness of the revolutionary neuroscientific discovery of neuroplasticity, the practical means become elucidated by which the deliberately engaged transformation of mind. Christian authors, Rolf R. Nolasco and R. Vincent MacDonald in their 2016 book Compassionate Presence, lay out this process of transformation of mind in detail:

The implications of a dynamic, experience-dependent, and plastic brain are far reaching on many levels. When this knowledge is paired with the Apostle Paul’s call for the renewal of the mind we come to realize just how important spiritual disciplines or habits of the soul (e.g. meditation) are in transforming our entire being – body, mind, and spirit – to reflect the character of God. More specifically, this landmark discovery casts light on the myriad ways we can transform our mind and rewire our brain to support and enhance our commitment to embody compassionate love to all. . . .  Our entire being begins to pulsate with the heartbeat of God so that his ways become our ways not only outwardly through acts of compassion but inwardly through the transformation of the mind. In turn, this changes the structures of our brain by strengthening the synaptic connections of our altruistic brain so as to reflect the very nature of the compassionate heart of God. [38]

Such an apt Christian application of purely secular neuroscience as described by Nolasco and MacDonald, stands behind the recently developed method called Christian Compassion Practice. This Practice developed out of three friends’ search for a rigorous spiritual formation method.

Frank Rogers Jr., Compassion in Practice: The Way of Jesus, Aug. 1, 2016, Upper Room Books.

In 2008 when the three, all living on the West Coast – two of them professors of spiritual formation – Andrew Dreitcer, a former Presbyterian minister and expert on historical Christian spiritual practices, Frank Rogers Jr., professor of spiritual formation and narrative pedagogy, and Mark Yaconelli, a youth pastor specializing in pastoral narratology – teamed up to formulate a Christ-following spiritual practice that would confront suffering. [39]

The trio formed an organization called Triptykos (which later metamorphosed into the Center for Engaged Compassion). The word “Triptykos” refers to the three-fold compassion, the basis of the organization: 1) the desire to be connected to a greater Source of compassion; 2) the desire to hold compassion for oneself and other persons; 3) the desire to become a compassionate presence toward the suffering that exists within the world. Yaconelli describes Triptykos’ purpose as “to re-claim Christianity as a spiritual path – a path that seeks to cultivate compassion rather than violence, personal vitality rather than self-hatred, and communion rather than alienation from the loving Source of all life.”[40]

Triptykos began its mission by developing and teaching “various spiritual exercises that involve contemplation, creativity, and compassionate action.” They took their teachings into environments fraught with pain and conflict, such as post-civil war Zimbabwe, where they assisted the process of reconciliation, into the Canadian prison system, and also into more relaxed environments where they taught workshop that demonstrated spiritual practices to inculcate the capacity to “love your enemy.”

In 2010 Triptykos changed its name when the organization became an official part of Claremont School of Theology in Claremont, California, to Center for Engaged Compassion (CEC). The following year, CEC, informed by extensive hands-on experience using the Triptykos practices, the team set out to deepen and concentrate their practice design. CEC put together a three-day conference that met at St. Benedict’s Monastery in Snowmass, Colorado, where Father Thomas Keating, co-founder of the Centering Prayer Movement that had expanded on the methods of Thomas Merton, with the purpose “to begin a conversation between Christian contemplatives and neuroscientists in hopes of designing future research projects.”[41]

The CEC team recognized that Contemplative Science had thus far “focused, almost exclusively on Buddhist forms of contemplative practice, ignoring the wealth of practices that exist in Western religious traditions,” as Yaconelli explained. This state of affairs was in need of changing so that the discoveries of Contemplative Science and the wealth of practices that exist in Western religious traditions would not remain segregated. [42]

The Snowmass colloquy’s goal was to deepen “the scientific understanding of the contribution Christian contemplative practice can make in the cultivation of compassionate action.” One of the key participants was Dr. Michael Spezio, like CEC’s Dr. Dreitcer, is a former Presbyterian minister. With a PhD in Cognitive & Systems Neuroscience, and Director of The Laboratory for Inquiry into Valuation and Emotion (The LIVE Lab) at Scripps Women’s College, Claremont, Dr. Spezio was equally at home with both Christian theology/practice and mind science.

Over the next four years (2010-2014), Prof. Rogers focused on refining the Triptykos practices and on putting together a “comprehensive, integrative compassion-forming practice.” In parallel, Prof. Dreitcer made a thorough study of Christian formation practices – from ancient times to the present – which contribute to compassion-cultivation. Dreitcer found that “however profound the practices may be, each contributes to compassion-formation in only a limited way.” [43]

Some of the practices highlight being grounded in an experience of receiving compassion: Desert Prayer, Recollection, and Centering Prayer, for example. Others focus on self-compassion: The Jesus Prayer. And still others highlight compassion for others, as well as for all creation: Meditations on the Life of Christ and “contemplation to attain Love.” More extended processes, such as the thirty-day retreat of the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises, draw together several of these dimensions through a combination of practices. But no single practice from Christian history explicitly leads us through the entire process of compassion cultivation, from being grounded in Divine Compassion to acting compassionately toward ourselves and others. This kind of comprehensive process is exactly what we need, if we truly are to live into the compassion Jesus invites us to embrace. [44]

The result of the CEC’s research was the Christian Compassion Practice, honed by Frank Rogers Jr. The Practice is explained and presented in its finished form the 2016 book, Compassion in Practice: The Way of Jesus, (Upper Room Books).

Dreitcer sums up the Practice – a refinement and consolidation of Christian compassion cultivation traditions, underpinned with contemporary scientific data:

It draws on historical roots and follows the circle of compassion shaped by Jesus’s invitation to love: grounding in divine compassion to acting compassionately toward ourselves and others. This practice, the Compassion Practice, moves us from compassionate understandings and feelings to wise, restorative, compassionate actions. It draws wisdom from contemporary research in psychology, neuroscience and spirituality. In other words, it gathers into one package key compassion-cultivating processes from Christian traditions and from current understandings that lie outside of religious traditions. [45]

Frank Rogers Jr., Compassion in Practice: The Way of Jesus, Aug. 1, 2016, Upper Room Books, p. 41

A firm, Scripture-based, conviction of the Center for Engaged Compassion is embodied in the Practice – holding that the kind of unconditional love (agape in the New Testament Greek) which Christ commanded his adherents to become capable of manifesting is a matter of being, of embodying Christlikeness, rather than just a cognitive knowing, or mere adoption of truth-claims, and that its fruits are, and indeed must be, proximate and individual effective action.

Compassion Practice is geared to open up capacities, curiosity and imagination, that are prerequisites for being able to see the other – the “neighbor” who is to be loved, including those who are not easy to understand and tolerate – in a way that visualizes his or her flourishing state, seeing possibilities rather than reacting to limitations.

Rogers notes that:

“[A] precondition for compassion is seeing is a particular way of seeing others. Usually when we relate to one another we do so through judgements and reactions that are conditioned by our own needs, desires, feelings and sensitivities. We do not see other persons on their own terms; rather, we perceive them through the filtered lenses of our own agendas, [yet] compassion entails being moved by another’s experience. . . . Compassion includes restorative action. without it compassion degenerates into sentimentality – feeling bad for others’ pain but ultimately abandoning them to fend for themselves. Compassion walks towards, not away. [45]

Notes Prof. Dreitcer: “[I]n the Bible, genuine compassion contains three characteristics that inseparably intertwine: understanding, feeling, and acting. . . . We don’t have compassion, we become compassionate. This trait of compassion embodiment is a creative one, not a merely reactive emotional state – a mere emotion, as we so often see compassion mischaracterized. Compassion delights in flourishing. Prof. Rogers adds that,

Genuine compassion is not limited to moments of suffering, offering an empathic connection only as long as others are in pain. Genuine compassion takes as much delight in others’ flourishing as it feels pathos for their pain. Indeed, pathos, when soaked with compassionate care, gives rise to the yearning that wounded persons flourish with abundant life. [47]

This Christ-imitating interpretation of Christianity – involving open connectivity with both God and with fellow mortals, whether friend or stranger, or even foe – contrasts starkly with narrower forms of the religion which keep their focus on two points: one’s access to an afterlife, and gaining special favors from the Almighty.

Christian Compassion Practice is a process of transformation to be undertaken through free will. It allows one to build compassion bit by bit, one part of oneself at a time. One need not wait for the Holy Spirit to “zap” one with some instantaneous transformational experience. The Compassion Practice, in contrast, shows how one may quite literally (physiologically) change one’s mind (in the spirit of metanoia) so that it becomes a nest that is ready and welcoming and actively summons the Holy Spirit.

Frank Rogers Jr., Keynote talk: "Cultivating Resilience Through the Peaks and Valleys of Chaplaincy," Harvard Divinity School, April 26, 2018.

Dallas Willard, an influential Baptist minister and professor of philosophy, addressed this problem – the how of becoming a disciple with a reconstituted heart-in-Christ, competent in the capability to “obey everything [He] has commanded” (Mat. 28:16-20). Willard, in The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus's Essential Teachings on Discipleship (2006), fearlessly countered “easy-believism,” explaining that --

[t]he abundance of God to our lives, to our families, and our ministries is not passively received or imposed and does not happen to us by chance. It is claimed and put into action by our active, intelligent pursuit of it. we must seek out ways to live and act in union with the flow of God’s Kingdom life that should come through our relationship with Jesus.

There is, of course, no question of doing this purely on our own. But we must act. Grace is opposed to earning, not effort. And it is well-directed, decisive, and sustained effort that is the key to the keys of the kingdom and to the life of the restful power in ministry and life that those keys open to us. [48]

Willard expanded on this point regarding the difference between an idea of trying to earn forgiveness from God and an acceptance of grace that necessarily results in deliberate efforts to obey His commands, in a 2010 interview: “Earning is an attitude. Effort is an action. Grace, you know, does not just have to do with forgiveness of sins alone.” [49]

3) The Future of Christian Compassion Cultivation

Where does Christianity stand in relation to the science of compassion?

Will the Triptykos/CEC project that seeks to reclaim Christ-following as a transformative spiritual path succeed in influencing the faith?

So, far, the scientific community has given almost no attention at all to the Christian Compassion Practice. This is painfully exemplified in The Oxford Companion to Compassion, published in 2017, a massive tome of more than 400,000 words, which devotes precisely 7 words to compassion-cultivation Christian context. The reference is to the writing of Frank Rogers Jr.

In the popular press, developments neuroscience-informed compassion cultivation has been, and continues to be, given a great deal of attention. Yet Christianity is almost always ignored in articles on the subject.

A striking example of this is an article, an excellent overview of compassion science for a general readership, by Heather S. Lonczak, Ph.D., published in 2020. The author poses this question, “What can I do to be more compassionate?” and then answers, offering five recommendations: 1) “Be altruistic;” 2) “Avoid judgment;” 3) “Practice gratitude;” 4) “Consider Buddhism;” 5) “Be kind to yourself.” This painfully illustrates how we are in a cultural moment in which compassion is simply no associated with the Christian religion by mainstream culture. [50]

Mark Yaconelli is well aware of the headwind that the Triptykos/CEC team is flying against. 

I learned that although the Western scientific community has increasingly embraced the Dalai Lama and Buddhist practice, there is great resistance to explore the religious traditions of the West, Christianity namely. As one researcher told me, “God is a problem.” What I realized in my interactions with scientists both at the Snowmass conference and in other settings, is that a significant number of Western scientists have wounds from their own Christian upbringing that cause a kind of reactivity toward any conversation with Christian theologians.

At Snowmass, I heard stories by a group of researchers of childhoods scarred by dogmatic pastors, shame-based churches, and Christian elders unwilling to engage real questions and doubts. As I listened to one researcher in particular describe the kind of God he was forced to worship as a boy, I realized that I too would have left the Christian faith if I was forced to accept a God who is all-controlling, distant, and shaming. When he finished his story of the God he no longer believes in, my only response was, “I don’t believe in that God either.” [51]

If there is any reasonable means by which to reverse this “excommunication” of Christianity from the consideration of the greater portion of the scientific community – and most importantly, scientific research on the efficacy of compassion cultivation practices – then, it would seem, that the CEC’s Christian Cultivation Practice, if it were to proliferate beyond its present fairly localized spheres of influence and adoption, offers the best opportunity.

Rembrandt van Rijn, The Return of the Prodigal Son, 1636, etching (Wikimedia CC)

Researchers of the Barna Group (and George Barna independently) – the premier statistical analysts of American Protestantism – are painfully aware of the quantitative trend of decline Christianity faces in the United States, and they put a great deal of work in trying to understand why this trend continues unabated. A 2016 study found that –

“Millennials are leaving the church. Nearly six in ten (59%) young people who grow up in Christian churches end up walking away.” In 2011, a study of youth (aged 18-29) who have been leaving church, found the third most cited reason was that “churches come across as antagonistic to science . . .  . many science-minded young Christians are struggling to find ways of staying faithful to their beliefs and to their professional calling in science-related industries.” [52]

A recent study (Sep. 2021) conducted by George Barna surveyed Millenials, finding that “75% say they lack meaning and purpose in life.” [53] This is a startling finding. This, along with the widely acknowledged mental health trends: society-wide loneliness epidemic, suicide and clinical depression, ought to spur a deep reappraisal of approach in Christian leadership’s priorities in the way they communicate with, and behave toward, those outsiders (and those who leave the church) who find little enduring attraction to the forms the Church continues to expend its resources on.

Spotlighting the Second Greatest Commandment, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” and treating it not simply as a beautiful sentiment, but as a serious directive that implicitly contains a “how to” component – a spiritual practice that brings one closer and closer to the ideal of imitation of Christ – might just be the ticket.

As of yet, Barna Group, in their effort to measure what the non-Christian public and those who give up on the church, might have to say, has not yet collected data on compassion – its absence, and the possibility that churches might systematically promote its practical cultivation. Perhaps it is time for Christian researchers to take a hard and long look at such questions.

Even deeply engaged Christians have, in increasing number, have grown weary of the limited vision of institutionalized Christianity. In 2015, Christian sociologist Joshua Packard coined the term “Dones” to describe a growing population of committed Christians who, after years of failed efforts made within their churches to bring about desired reforms, have exited – not to quit the faith, but in order to live in a more Christ-imitating way. [54]

It is institutionalized religion that, in so many communities, is failing to inspire – not the message of the four Gospels that record the three-year ministry of Jesus.

4) Coda – New York City

This article is being written in New York City, where neuroscience-informed compassion cultivation is made available in a number of venues. Stanford CCT (Compassion Cultivation Training) is offered at two venues associated with religion, YHMWCA (“The Jewish Y,” or, “92nd Street Y”) and Tibet House US. The same is offered and two secular venues, Columbia University Office of Work/Life, and New York University Continuing Education.  A New York City Center for Compassion Focused Therapy offers the protocol developed by Paul Gilbert in England. The Nalanda Institute for Contemplative Science, also in the city, offers Compassion-Based Resilience Training. Both are secular neuroscience-informed organizations.

Tibet House, US, 22 W 15th St, New York, NY (Ajay Suresh, Wikimedia CC)

Yet no Christian form of neuroscience-informed compassion cultivation has been offered in the city as far as can be ascertained.

Scientific research on the neural mechanisms of compassion cultivation continues at a heady pace. In the cultural climate of religion decline in the US – precipitous in the case of Catholic and Protestant Christianity – featuring both decline in number, as well as decline in reputation – one might think the programmatic offering of a Christian compassion cultivation training, informed by scientific research and data, ought to be worth devoting close attention to.

Some critics within the faith have described contemporary Christianity as “boxy.” At this time, perhaps a fresh new approach to following the Great Commandment – through the deliberate science-informed practice of compassion cultivation might be an “outside the box” solution. I could be a solution that leads to both renewal  of the Body of Christ and would furnish a luminous signal that attracts the notice of the skeptical community, proving concretely that there is significant value and great potential for reform within that faith which they’ve grown accustomed to dismissing as archaic and irrelevant.

Ecclesia semper reformanda est: “The Church is must always be reformed,” said Augustine of Hippo.

The West is now in the midst of a science-informed “Compassion Renaissance.” This offers both opportunity and specific direction for renewal and flourishing. Compassion-cultivation practices now available may be the perfect way to get back to the Church’s roots in the living ministry of Jesus – which changed the world in the astonishing early decades of the first century.

A church that rigorously disciples its members in the cultivation of compassion – of Christ-imitation – is a church that radiates its founder's spirit and attracts the weary, the confused and the lost.

As Dallas Willard put it: “Church growth is not just more Christians, but bigger Christians, flush with Christ’s character.” [55]

Dallas Willard, George Fox Evangelical Seminary in Portland, Oregon, Sep. 26, 2008 (Loren Kerns, Wikimedia CC)

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NOTES

[36] Daniel Goleman, Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships, Bantam, 2006.

[37] The inadequacy of any one-word translation of metanoia has been noted as early as Tertullian; “Embracing the movement within metanoia requires that we recognize regret and repentance as active states necessary to the overall experience, but repentance can overshadow the transformative dimensions of metanoia. For example, Matthew Arnold objects to the translation of metanoia as “repentance,” stating that the “main part was something far more active and fruitful—the setting up an immense new inward movement for obtaining one’s rule of life. And ‘metanoia,’ accordingly, is: A change of the inner man”. (178). [Arnold, Matthew. Literature and Dogma: An Essay towards a Better Apprehension of the Bible. New York: Macmillan, 1914, 178; Kelly A. Myers, “Metanoic Movement: The Transformative Power of Regret,” CCC (College Composition and Communication, National Federation of Teachers), 67:3, February 2016, 385-410; p. 391.

[38] Rolf R. Nolasco Jr. & Vincent McDonald, Compassionate Presence: A Radical Response to Human Suffering, 2016, Wipf and Stock, p. 72.

[39] The practice had been embryonic, developing in classes jointly taught by Rogers and Dreitcer in 2005-2007 at Claremont School of Theology, and gelled as the “Compassion Practice” during an August 2008 retreat in Sausalito.

[40] Mark Yaconelli, “Threefold Compassion,” Patheos, Nov. 4, 2009.

[41] Mark Yaconelli, “Science, Contemplation, and the God Who Doesn’t Exist,” July 17, 2011.

[42] Mark Yaconelli, “Science, Contemplation, and the God Who Doesn’t Exist,” July 17, 2011.

[43] Andrew Dreitcer, Living Compassion: Loving Like Jesus, Upper Room Books, 2017, p. 106.

[44] Dreitcer, 2017, p. 106.

[45] Dreitcer, 2017, p. 106.

[46] Rogers, 2016, pp. 30, 31, 33.

[47] Rogers, 2016, p. 33.

[48] Dallas Willard, The Great Omission: Reclaiming Jesus's Essential Teachings on Discipleship, HarperOne, 2006, p. 34; italics in original.

[49] Dallas Willard, Audio Interview with John Ortberg, June (?),2010, Catalyst West conference.

[50] Heather S. Lonczak, Ph.D., “20 Reasons Why Compassion Is So Important in Psychology,” Positive Psychology, Jan. 9, 2020.

[51] Mark Yaconelli, “Science, Contemplation, and the God Who Doesn’t Exist,” July 17, 2011.

[52] “Six Reasons Young Christians Leave Church,” Barna Group, Sep. 27, 2011.

[53] George Barna, “Millennials in America: New Insight into the Generation of Growing Influence”, Cultural Research Center, Arizona Christian University.

[54] Josh Packard Ph.D., Ashleigh Hope, Church Refugees: Sociologists Reveal Why People Are Done with Church but Not Their Faith, Group Pub., 2015

[55] Dallas Willard, foreword to: Kent Carlson and Mike Lueken. Renovation of the Church: What Happens When a Seeker Church Discovers Spiritual Formation, InterVarsity Press, 2011.

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