Book Review - Spiritual Intelligence by Alan Nelson

Review of Spiritual Intelligence – Alan E. Nelson
Baker Books, 2010

Reviewed by Kevin Book-Satterlee

The cultivation of spirituality in Evangelicalism is on the rise. Once popularly considered “new agey”, a deep longing for a deeper knowledge and communion with God has prodded a renaissance of Godly Evangelical spirituality. It has also brought on a revival of many varying types of spirituality, not all of them helpful for Christian discipleship and mission. The idea of Spiritual Intelligence is a good one, and Alan Nelson has a book about it.

Much like the Intelligence Quotient (IQ) or Emotional Quotient (EQ), Nelson promotes his book as the book on the Spiritual Quotient (SQ). The use of a quotient helps to calculate spiritual sensitivity, providing a measurable check to the reader on where he or she is. Nelson’s book plainly advertizes the Spiritual Quotient on the front of the cover, but aside from a small self-assessment tool (also prominently advertized on the book) very little was mentioned about this measureable spirituality.

The lack of SQ in the book, however is one of its better aspects. The spiritual journey is too much of a journey to be so measureable. The metaphor of journey for the spiritual life is a good one, tried, tested, and true, but can also be trite. Nelson uses the journey form of a “road trip” to allegorize spirituality and spiritual growth. To make this allegory work for Nelson’s purposes, the road trip needed to be emphasized, but it felt as though Nelson did not commit to it, and turned out rather gimmicky.

Nothing Nelson writes was anti-spiritual and was very Christian. It is a good first book on spirituality for those new to the faith and for those who have not read any other books on spirituality. The book works for a reader who wants to “remove some of the mysticism of soul growth.” Nelson writes, “Far too much effort goes into subjective, esoteric activities void of measureable outcomes.” A computerized spirituality, concrete in form is often how a person begins the spiritual journey. This book is for that purpose. While spirituality is mystical and unmeasureable, the esoteric nature of spiritual growth can be confusing and scary to a new believer.

I am not a fan of the “measureable” nature of Nelson’s spiritual approach. It feels contrived. I do not measure my road trip success by how many miles to the gallon I got, nor how many songs on the radio I listened to. Rather I take in the sights, the scenes and I rock out to the music that comes from my car speakers, lost then in the experience of being on the road.

The other thing that irked me from the book took me a while to place. There is nothing inherently bad about utilizing the locations one has lived in writing a book, however by the end of the book I realized that every place that Nelson mentioned caters to an upper-middle-class reader. So often spirituality brings one low, but Nelson’s spirituality seemed to be couched in “the good life.” He never said as much and I doubt he believe spirituality caters only to the middle class, but it does alienate a large number of potential readers, and likely lacks a connection with most readers.

With regards to mission, I cannot recommend this book. Most mission fields are not to a people group that wants measureable spirituality. For missionaries or those considering the mission field, this book is too basic and does not deal well with the spirituality one faces on the mission field. An updated book with more to do on the self-assessment could actually be more helpful for a missionary despite an increase in measureable outcomes, but until then, this book is rather unhelpful in increasing library of Evangelical spirituality.