Intersection Of Spirituality Research Articles

Thematic Analysis of the Intersection of Spirituality and Eating Disorder Symptoms

The authors interviewed 12 female participants about the intersection of their spiritual beliefs and eating disorder symptoms. Three main themes emerged from the data: (a) spiritual beliefs as helpful, (b) choice not to ask for spiritual help, and (c) guilt.

IPS: Learn About Integrating Care and Expanding Partnerships

IPS: Learn About Integrating Care and Expanding Partnerships

The Intersection of Spirituality, Religion, Sexual Orientation, and Gender Identity in Family Therapy Training: An Exploration of Students’ Beliefs and Practices

This study explored the relationship between the level of clinical training that family therapy students receive related to spirituality and/or religion and their beliefs about providing therapy to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) clients. The sample consists of 341 students in family therapy programs who completed an online survey assessing the level of training on spirituality and/or religion that students received as well as indicators assessing the level of congruence between students’ spiritual and/or religious beliefs and the practices of LGBT affirmative and reparative therapies. The findings highlight a number of significant associations between the training students receive on spirituality and/or religion and their beliefs about therapy with LGBT clients.

An Adult Educator’s Hard Look at a Not-So-Soft Space

Spirituality has become an important area of study and practice for those interested in adult education. Yet, the interest of scholars and practitioners is often confined to the positive aspects of the topic and is often devoid of questions, challenges and criticality. This essay carefully examines the notion of spirituality and argues that a robust, critical and engaged understanding of the topic needs to incorporate insights from religion and the critical social sciences, insights that are necessarily difficult to manage and negotiate. The author offers cases of the intersection of spirituality and gender, race and conflict, as a way to highlight the complexity of spirituality, and to argue for continuous engagement with its contradictions and challenges.

Spirituality as a Lived Experience: Exploring the Essence of Spirituality for Women in Late Life

Against the backdrop of a dramatic increase in the number of individuals living longer, particularly older women, it is vital that researchers explore the intersection of spirituality, gender, and aging. In this qualitative study of six women aged 80 and older, I explore, using, multiple, in-depth interviews, the experiences of spirituality over the life course. A hermeneutic phenomenological analysis of the interviews was performed and provided insights into the nature of their "lived experience" allowing for the understanding of the essence of their spirituality. The results are presented as an interpretation of the participants' perceptions of their spirituality and spiritual experiences. For the women in this study, the essence of their spirituality lies in: being profoundly grateful; engaging in complete acceptance; and having a strong sense of assuredness, while stressing the linkages and importance of spirituality. Implications for understanding spirituality for older adults are considered.

Spirituality, recruiting, and total wellness: overcoming challenges to organizational attraction

As individuals and organizations are more consciously exploring the intersection of spirituality and work the question arises as to what impact spirituality will have in terms of organizational recruitment. Drawing on the literature surrounding recruitment, as well as signaling theory, diversity, and person-organizational fit, we explore the potential influence of spirituality on organizational attractiveness. After considering the various organizational motivations for projecting spirituality into recruitment efforts, we develop attraction-related propositions associated with those distinct motivations. Finally, we propose that a singular approach to contextualizing spirituality will have the most positive effect on organizational attraction regardless of organizational motivation.

Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Students Coming Out at the Intersection of Spirituality and Sexual Identity

In this study, the researchers examined how lesbian, gay, and bisexual undergraduate students negotiated and defined their spiritual identities during the coming-out process. Although there were varied responses, the findings suggest that students describe spirituality as acceptance, personal relationships with a powerful essence, and connections to nature. When navigating multiple identities, students experienced various levels of intersectionality including irreconciliation, progressive development, arrested development, completed development, and reconciliation.

Transforming the Spirit: Spirituality in the Treatment of the African American Male Perpetrator of Intimate Partner Violence

When violence is internalized, it will manifest in various forms. Within the African American community, the African American male perpetrator's abusive behavior is one indicator of the internalized violence. African traditional practices of spirituality are a testament of their conceptualization and understanding of the intersection of mind, body, and spirit. The ways in which intimate partner violence (IPV) and spirituality intersect are critical. This article presents a conceptual framework informed by Intersectionality and Transpersonal theory to examine the intersections of IPV, gender, race, and spirituality for the African American male perpetrator in service delivery. Implications for further research are discussed.

Spiritual weapons: Black female principals and religio‐spirituality

The historic connection of religion and spirituality to women, education, advocacy, and leadership is prevalent in Black American histories in general and the role of the religion and spirit in promoting education and socialisation. Important in this history is the intersection of spirituality and leadership for Black American women. This research privileges woman and female agency in rearticulating gender and race in ways that are meaningful despite subjectivities. This study, informed by notions of religio‐spirituality, is taken from a larger study of the life narratives of four Black female principals. Through narrative analysis, the intersectionality of gender, race, and religio‐spirituality highlighted the relationship of past and current religio‐spiritual leadership understandings that contest the status quo in US schools. Our study highlights one example in which the historicity and analysis of gender and race contributes to reconceputalising educational administration by emphasising the voices of Black women principals, voices that provide alternative understandings of educational administration, stress the importance of gendered and raced voices in administration, and question formulaic models of leadership and the research that reifies them.

Partners in the Spiritual Dance: Learning Clients’ Steps While Minding All Our Toes

We present four case illustrations highlighting the complex interplay of therapists' and clients' spirituality in therapy. Complexity, in these cases, results from (a) degrees of similarity and difference, both real and perceived, between clients' and therapists' spiritual beliefs and practices; (b) degrees of spiritual disclosure; (c) characteristics of the therapeutic relationship; and (d) geographic and cultural influences. Practicing therapists and therapist training programs can benefit from addressing how therapist and client spirituality intersect and influence therapy, how both similarity and difference present obstacles and opportunities, and how ambiguity and assumptions can contribute to misunderstandings. We believe that both the therapist's and the client's spiritualities are key influences in therapy that can contribute to the frustration, and the growth, of clients and therapists alike.

GOD, DISEASE, AND SPIRITUAL DILEMMAS: READING THE LIVES OF WOMEN WITH BREAST CANCER

Abstract.To write about the disease of breast cancer from both scientific and spiritual perspectives is to reflect upon our genetic and spiritual ancestry. We examine the issues involved in breast cancer at the intersections of spirituality, technology, and science, using the fundamental thing we know about being human: our bodies. Our goal in this essay is to offer close readings of women's spiritual and bodily journeys through the disease of breast cancer. We have discovered that both illness and health come within the stories of particular people and particular disciplines. And to learn more about breast cancer, both scientific and spiritual aspects, one must be attentive to such particularities. Medicine and religion are bodily experiences, and being a body‐self is what it means to be human.

Integrating Service and Spirituality in College

In this issue we include papers and presentations from a recent conference hosted by DePaul University and the Illinois Campus Compact. Conference speakers and presenters examined the impact of community service experiences on college student learning and development and how faith and spirituality intersect and interact with these effects. We hope that these papers and presentations will offer new perspectives and insights on the connections between service and spirituality in the lives of college students and how colleges and universities can enhance their educational efforts in these areas. We are grateful to our colleagues at DePaul University for their assistance in compiling this special issue and for their leadership on this important topic.

Intersections of spirituality, religion and gender in children’s literature

This paper explores the intersections of spirituality, religion and gender in contemporary children’s books published in the United States. Background for the discussion includes a history of religion in children’s literature and the history of women’s roles in the Christian tradition. Representative works of realistic fiction – historical and contemporary – and one work of science fiction are discussed.

Sexual Misconduct in the Clergy: The Search for the Father

This paper explores how clergy sexual misconduct occurs at the intersection of spirituality, sexuality, and unchallenged omnipotence. Pathological relations to sexuality and power often reflect a narcissistic refusal of certain existential givens, such as difference, limit, separateness, and lack. The teachings of Christianity, the hierarchy of the Catholic organization, and the demand for celibacy can offer pathological solutions for problems with sexuality, power, and narcissistic vulnerability. Fantasies of merger can collapse the boundaries of time, space, difference, and separateness, as well as offer a triumph over oedipal rivalry without competition, aggression, or envy. Through the Holy Spirit, the third vector of the Trinity, a priest may become one with Christ and God. He finds maternal holding through merger with her, the church, while taking in and becoming one with a masculine and omnipotent ideal with him, Christ and God. In this way, the hierarchy of the church may support omnipotence rather than challenge it while at the same time offering a vehicle for its disavowal.

The dance of giving and receiving: Spirituality and the development officer, volunteer, and donor

AbstractHidden in our hearts is a longing—to live deeply and fully, with purpose and joy. At the intersection of spirituality and philanthropy is the dance of giving and receiving and how we create ourselves, our community, and our world.

A Cultural Trinity

The authors present a framework for understanding the intersections of spirituality, religion, and gender in mental health and relationship problems, with special emphasis on gender equality. Clinicians are encouraged to distinguish religion and spirituality and to engage with clients at the spiritual level. Principles for practice that facilitate differentiation from cultural constructions that promote and reinforce gender inequality are proposed with case illustrations.

Allegories of War: Language and Violence in Old English Poetry

Explores the intersection of spirituality and violence in Old English poetry using contemporary approaches