The past 20 years has seen considerable growth in religious gerontology as a field of basic and applied scholarship. Empirical research, for one, has expanded so rapidly that it has overwhelmed other forms of scholarly exploration and contributed to the weakening of the original focus of religious gerontology on professional practice, congregational and denominational programming, and qualitative evaluative study. The casual observer would be excused for thinking that this subject has become primarily the domain of number-crunching social and biomedical scientists. Bob Atchley has done much to disavow us of this notion. Atchley's most recent book, Spirituality and Aging, is about the spiritual journey that evolves and unfolds throughout the human lifecourse – its nature, its concomitants, its impacts; not explicitly about the nuances of its study. This is a book concerned with the process of spiritual growth and development that leads us, ideally, into the fullest flower of our being. It is a substantive monograph and an original intellectual contribution, not a summary of existing research, although Atchley's writing here is based on many years of qualitative and focused investigation, especially through interviews and conversations with older adults.

Spirituality and Aging is thus not suitable as an introduction to or summary of research on this subject, particularly quantitative research studies. Someone looking for a review of the increasingly substantial research field of religious gerontology would be disappointed. But, in fairness, this is not Atchley's purpose here. Rather, his aim is to explore ‘fundamental questions about the meaning of being and how it is shaped by the experience of aging’ (p. 1). At this, he does an outstanding job. The greatest strength of Spirituality and Aging is its emphasis on the transpersonal, and on transcendence, spirituality, religious experience, mysticism, communal expressions of faith, the stages of sage-ing, and consecrating one's life to service. This is a lot to take on – each of these themes in relation to ageing could command a full-length book – and Atchley does a masterly job. Moreover, these are concepts not typically engaged in theoretical writing in academic religious gerontology, so Atchley's efforts are all the more commendable. Further, this material is covered through dozens of first-person accounts, plenty of expansive summaries of the thoughts and ideas of key scholars, and Atchley's own insightful personal reflections as he has evolved through his own spiritual journey.

Atchley's thesis is that ‘spirituality can take three basic forms: intense awareness of the present, transcendence of the personal self, or a feeling of connection with all life, the universe, a supreme being, or a great web of being. Most people grow into these perspectives in a succession or upward spiral of increasing understanding we call spiritual development or spiritual growth. Many come to recognize that these vantage points are interrelated and can reside in awareness simultaneously’ (pp. 1–2). Atchley's understanding of spirituality and its dynamically adaptive and salutary potentials that come with ageing is a useful corrective to the focus of so much research and writing in this field, which typically defines and investigates religion primarily in the context of institutional expressions of faith and as formally observable behaviours that are presumably static and conditioned only by external contexts. This is fine, to a point, and has driven most of the research and writing done up to now on this subject. But with such a narrow focus we miss out on identifying the fullness of the spiritual lives of older adults, most of its richness, and almost all of its ultimate significance. Atchley, like others in the religious gerontology field before him – the late Gene Thomas comes to mind, as does Susan Eisenhandler – demonstrates this convincingly.

Atchley is thus to be greatly commended for opening our eyes to a fuller and richer view of the place of spirituality in the ageing process. That he is able to explore all of these themes with such insight and depth in this slim and accessible monograph is to his credit. Spirituality and Aging is a seminal work for the religious gerontology field and should be added to the must-read list for anyone seeking to become an informed scholar or practitioner in this field. I heartily agree with the words found in Rick Moody's dust-jacket endorsement: Spirituality and Aging is indeed ‘an enormous and unprecedented contribution’ to the field of religious gerontology. Those of us who identify with the empirical research in religious gerontology should take Atchley's considerations to heart and strive to ensure that his insights inform our studies. In so doing, we will expand the horizons of current investigations. This would, accordingly, ‘provide a conceptual and theoretical picture of spirituality that is much broader, deeper, higher, more interrelated, symphonic, full-spectrum, and panoramic than the narrow views used in much of the current work on spirituality and aging’ (p. 8).