Mysticism is on the rise as a topic of cultural interestand as a part of the burgeoning interest in “spirituality” that has defined the cultural temperament of our times. This shift has had a predictable effect on the kinds of students enrolling in mainline Protestant seminaries, as well on as the interests they bring. All this would have surprised faculty members of an earlier generation. If mysticism was touched upon at all in the seminary curriculum of, say, 1980, it was a topic left to the historians; survey courses in systematic theology generally would not have ventured into such arcane territory. When referred to, sources categorized as mystical—for example, Hildegard of Bingen, Meister Eckhart, Julian of Norwich—were relegated to a shaky status at the fringes of theology; the “real” theological contributors included such great scholastics as Anselm, Aquinas, and Bonaventure. The textbooks used during this period illustrate the point: Williston Walker's standard History of the Christian Church, which appeared in its first edition in 1918 and was in steady use in many theological schools, was significantly revised by a team of historians from Union Theological Seminary only for the fourth edition of 1985. Until that time, the narrative focus moved rather quickly from an exploration of Christian origins and the early fathers to the great Protestant reformers with a relatively cursory overview of the Middle Ages and almost no reference to medieval mystics.