Jerry Sittser

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Gerald Lawson Sittser (born June 14, 1950), known as Jerry Sittser, is an American theologian and author. He is professor emeritus of theology at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington, where he taught from 1989 until his retirement from teaching in 2020. He is best known for A Grace Disguised (1996), written after a 1991 automobile accident killed his wife, his mother, and his four-year-old daughter. His books also include the scholarly study A Cautious Patriotism (1997) and Water from a Deep Well (2007), a history of Christian spirituality.

Early life and education

Sittser was born on June 14, 1950, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He earned a B.A. in chemistry from Hope College in 1972 and an M.Div. from Fuller Theological Seminary in 1975. He received a Ph.D. in the history of Christianity from the University of Chicago in 1989, with distinction, where he studied under historian Martin Marty. and he held a Jacob K. Javits Fellowship during his doctoral studies.

Career

After seminary Sittser served as associate pastor of Emmanuel Reformed Church in Paramount, California, from 1975 to 1979. He was chaplain of Northwestern College in Orange City, Iowa, from 1979 to 1985, and he later joined the college's board of trustees.

In 1989 Sittser joined the faculty of Whitworth, then Whitworth College, in Spokane. His teaching centered on the history of Christianity and the history of Christian spirituality, and he also taught on religion in American public life. He founded the university's M.A. in Theology program in 2009, together with its Certification for Ministry program and Academy of Christian Discipleship. In 2014 and 2015 he worked with Terry McGonigal to secure Lilly and Murdock grants totaling $1.4 million, which established Whitworth's Office of Church Engagement, and further Lilly grants amounting to $3 million followed. Beginning in the summer of 2015 he worked half time as a senior fellow in the office while continuing to teach half time.

Whitworth's senior classes voted Sittser Most Influential Professor ten times, most recently the class of 2015, and in 2009 Hope College gave him its Distinguished Alumni Award. He retired from teaching in the summer of 2020, after 31 years at Whitworth, and continued part time as a senior fellow in the Office of Church Engagement. He now holds the title professor emeritus of theology.

A Grace Disguised

On September 27, 1991, the Sittser family was returning from a Native American powwow in Idaho, a trip that completed a homeschool unit, when a drunk driver crossed into their lane and struck their minivan head-on. Sittser's wife Lynda, his mother Grace, and his four-year-old daughter Diana Jane were killed. He survived with his three other children, Catherine, David, and John.

Sittser wrote A Grace Disguised out of that loss, and Zondervan published the book in 1996. In it he rejects the idea that catastrophic loss is something a person gets over. Loss, he argues, is not left behind but absorbed into a life, until it becomes part of who a person is: "Sorrow took up permanent residence in my soul and enlarged it." Reviewing the book in Christianity Today, Christopher A. Hall wrote: "It is perhaps the finest book on grief and loss I have ever read."

The book has been a bestseller for more than 15 years and has been translated into more than 20 languages. An expanded edition appeared in 2004, and a revised and expanded edition was published for the book's twenty-fifth anniversary in 2021.

Sittser returned to the accident in A Grace Revealed: How God Redeems the Story of Your Life (2012), arguing that God takes up a person's own story into the larger biblical story of redemption. The book received an Award of Merit from Christianity Today in 2013.

Other books and scholarship

A Cautious Patriotism: The American Churches and the Second World War (University of North Carolina Press, 1997) studies how American churches responded to the Second World War. Drawing on religious periodicals and denominational yearbooks, Sittser argues that the churches met the war with a "cautious patriotism". They remained loyal to the nation, but a generation disillusioned by the First World War resisted fanaticism. Richard Pierard called the book "the first full-length study of the role which the U.S. churches played in World War II" and judged it "a useful study", while criticizing its handling of European history. Jill K. Gill called it "well-researched, lucidly written" and wrote that Sittser "proves his thesis convincingly".

Sittser has described his vocation as being "a bridge between the world of the academy and the world of ordinary people". Water from a Deep Well: Christian Spirituality from Early Martyrs to Modern Missionaries (2007) surveys the history of Christian spirituality, and it won the Logos Book Award. A revised edition of the book appeared in 2026, adding a chapter on the spirituality of resistance and persistence and an afterword by John Mark Comer.

His books for general readers include The Will of God as a Way of Life (2000) and When God Doesn't Answer Your Prayer (2003), which won the 2005 Gold Medallion Award in the Christian Living category from the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association.

In Resilient Faith (2019), Sittser argues that the early church became known as a "third way" alongside Roman religion and Judaism, and that its pattern of engaged distinctiveness speaks to Christians in a secular age. Reviewing the book in The Gospel Coalition, Douglas Webster wrote that Sittser shows how the early church "emerged in the Roman world with a distinctive identity in Christ".

His most recent book, The Christian Faith as a Way of Life: A New Catechumenate, adapts the early church's catechumenate, its process for forming new believers, to a post-Christendom culture, and is intended for use by small groups and churches.

Sittser also wrote the introductory essay on the history of Christian spirituality for the Dictionary of Christian Spirituality (2011), and he has published in the Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care and Christian Scholar's Review.

Personal life

Sittser's first wife, Lynda, died in the 1991 accident. He married Patricia in 2010. He has three children and two stepchildren, and he lives in Spokane.

Bibliography

• The Adventure: Putting Energy into Your Walk with God (1985)
• Loving across Our Differences (1994)
• A Grace Disguised (1996)
• A Cautious Patriotism: The American Churches and the Second World War (1997)
• The Will of God as a Way of Life (2000)
• When God Doesn't Answer Your Prayer (2003)
• Water from a Deep Well: Christian Spirituality from Early Martyrs to Modern Missionaries (2007)
• Love One Another: Becoming the Church Jesus Longs For (2008)
• A Grace Revealed: How God Redeems the Story of Your Life (2012)
• Resilient Faith: How the Early Christian "Third Way" Changed the World (2019)
• The Christian Faith as a Way of Life: A New Catechumenate (2026)

References

External links

• Gerald Sittser at Whitworth University