The contours of religion through the narrated photographs of Philippine Catholic university students

Abstract

The study claims that religion is tangibly present at a Catholic university in the Philippines. Examining the participants’ views of religion yielded the following contours: a. Well-being; b. Connections; c. Service-Oriented; d. Dispositions; e. Higher Value; f. Metaphysical; and g. Encompassing. These contours are consistent with contemporary theories of religion on how people worldwide create and re-create their sacred worlds and often utilise physical landscapes where they are located as material resources. The use of phenomenology in the present study emphasises religion’s embeddedness in physical space yet simultaneously encompasses the spiritual or metaphysical areas and areas in-between, where young people manifest religion in the interconnections and interstices and crevices of spaces, real or imagined. The research affirms Graham Rossiter’s view that Catholic educators must be able to draw out young peoples’ contemporary meanings of religion and spirituality to draw out a possibility of Catholic universities becoming transformative spaces for students to express their religious and spiritual views.