Servants of Christ Research Professor of Monastic Studies and Ascetical Theology
gpeters@nashotah.edu | (562) 325-0318
SMD in Monastic Studies, Pontificio Ateneo di Sant’Anselmo, Rome
PhD in Theology, St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto
MA, St. John’s School of Theology
MA, Dallas Theological Seminary
BS in Biblical Studies, Cairn University
Canon Peters joined Nashotah House in 2018 and oversees the annual James Lloyd Breck Conference on Monasticism and the Church and teaches courses in monasticism and ascetical theology. His research interests include the history and theology of Christian monasticism, the history of Christian (esp. monastic) theology, and ascetical theology. He has presented papers regularly at the International Congress on Medieval Studies and the Evangelical Theological Society annual meeting. His published articles have appeared in the American Benedictine Review, Cistercian Studies Quarterly, Tjurunga: An Australasian Benedictine Review, and the Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care, alongside articles in other peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes. His most recently published books are Anglican Spirituality: An Introduction (Cascade Books, 2024) and Thomas à Kempis: His Life and Spiritual Theology (Cascade Books, 2021).
Canon Peters is also Professor of Medieval and Spiritual Theology in the Torrey Honors College of Biola University, and a Visiting Scholar at the Von Hügel Institute, St Edmund’s College in the University of Cambridge. In the past, he has also served as a visiting professor at St. John’s School of Theology. He serves (since 2012) as rector of the Anglican Church of the Epiphany in La Mirada, California. Ordained in 2009 in the Anglican Church of North America (ACNA), he served from 2009-2012 in part-time ministry at the Diocese of Western Anglicans’ All Saints Cathedral, Long Beach, and until 2020 as a diocesan examining chaplain. Prior to his Anglican ordination he was a Baptist minister, serving parishes in Minnesota and Ontario, Canada. He is Canon Theologian of the Reformed Episcopal Church’s Diocese of Mid-America and a member of the ACNA-Roman Catholic dialogue and the ACNA’s Monastic Communities Task Force.
Canon Peters is a proud Virginian who loves to travel and read, especially nineteenth-century Russian fiction (Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy and Chekhov) and the twentieth-century French novelists Georges Bernanos and François Mauriac. He also enjoys the poetry of John Donne, George Herbert, and Gerard Manley Hopkins. Canon Peters’ hobbies include running, home improvement projects and watching films with his family. He is married to Christina, and they have two sons, Brendan and Nathanael, and one daughter-in-law, Adriana.
In progress: Medieval Monastic Theology: Tasting and Seeing the Goodness of God (Eerdmans Publishing, forthcoming). This book will adopt the methodological, categorical heuristic of Jean Leclercq (“monastic theology” vs. “scholastic theology”) to investigate in depth the riches of medieval monastic theology as a theological methodology.
In progress: The Evangelical Church in the Middle Ages (InterVarsity Press, forthcoming). This book seeks to answer the question, Where was the evangelical church in the Middle Ages? It is an apologetic, geared toward the evangelical church, for an embrace and recovery of the Middle Ages.
In progress: An Anglican ascetical theology that begins with the Stoic tradition of philosophy as a way of life, moving through the patristic (esp. Clement of Alexandria) and medieval eras, culminating in the Anglican tradition, especially the Anglican poetic tradition. Given that the foundation of ascetical theology is a robust anthropology and theology of grace, the book will be a combination of both constructive theology and Christian history.
In progress: A history of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century monasticism (especially the Carthusians, the Order of the Hermits of St. Augustine, Augustinian Canons and English solitaries) focusing on non-traditional, non-historic patterns. It will make use of a collection of published but untranslated semi-religious apologies from northern Europe alongside lesser-known texts from Jean Gerson and Gabriel Biel.
In progress: A collection of translations, with commentary, of monastic treatises of Thomas à Kempis that is tied into general patterns of Thomas’ conception of imitatio and interiority.
Anglican Spirituality: An Introduction (Cascade Books, 2024)
Editor, Edward Bouverie Pusey and the Monastic Tradition: The 2023 James Lloyd Breck Conference on Monasticism and The Church (Nashotah House Press, 2024)
Editor, From Anchorhold to Parish – English Monasticism and Anglican Spirituality: The 2022 James Lloyd Breck Conference on Monasticism and The Church (Nashotah House Press, 2022)
Editor, Parish Asceticism: The 2021 James Lloyd Breck Conference on Monasticism and The Church (Nashotah House Press, 2021)
Editor, Becoming a Community of Disciples: Guidelines from Abbot Benedict and Bishop Basil (Sacred Roots Spiritual Classics 2) (Upland, IN: Samuel Morris Publications/Sacred Roots, 2021)
Thomas à Kempis: His Life and Spiritual Theology. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2021.
Editor, The Monastic Call of Every Christian. Nashotah, WI: Nashotah House Press, 2019.
The Monkhood of All Believers: The Monastic Foundation of Christian Spirituality. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2018.
The Story of Monasticism: Retrieving an Ancient Tradition for Contemporary Spirituality (Baker Academic, 2015)
Reforming the Monastery: Protestant Theologies of Religious Life (Cascade Books, 2014)
Peter of Damascus: Byzantine Monk and Spiritual Theologian (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2011)
“Evangelicalism’s Embrace of Early Monastic Reading Practices: An Accidental Ressourcement,” in Alex Fogleman and Richard A. Brumback, III, eds., Scripture in the Search for the Doctrine of God: Reading and Receiving the Bible in Christian Tradition – Essays in Honor of D.H. Williams (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2026), 182-198.
“The ‘Reanimation Principle’ of Edward Bouverie Pusey: The Re-Establishment of Monasticism in the Church of England,” Anglican and Episcopal History 94.3 (2025): 551-572.
“Re-formed Catholic Anglicanism on Spirituality” and “Re-formed Catholic Anglicanism on Asceticism,” in Charles F. Camlin, Charles D. Erlandson and Joshua L. Harper, eds., Re-Formed Catholic Anglicanism: Essays from the 2023 Anglican Way Institute (Dallas: Anglican Way Institute, 2024), 75-86 and 87-98.
“The Necessity of Monastic Asceticism: A Case for Retrieval in Contemporary Evangelicalism,” Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care 17 (2024): 71-82.
“Late Medieval Monasticism and Children’s Education: Monastic Apostolate or Recruiting Tool?” in Bernard Sawicki, ed., Monasticism, Education and Formation Symposium (Rome: Eos-Verlag, 2024), 257-269.
“Joseph (Fr. Ignatius) Leycester Lyne (1837-1908) and Revival of Monasticism in the Anglican Communion,” in Hugh Feiss and Maureen O’Brien, eds., A Benedictine Reader: 1530–1930 (Collegeville, MN: Cistercian Publications, 2023), 381-400.
“Bare Ruined Choirs?: The Death and Life of Anglican Monasticism,” American Benedictine Review 74.1 (2023): 22-41.
