State Of Spirituality Research Articles

East meets West: applying Eastern spirituality in clinical practice

The paper discusses the application of the Eastern body-mind-spirit approach in healthcare practice. Traumas, sufferings and losses may induce immense distress in patients and their families, as well as apathy and exhaustion in healthcare workers. Over-specialization and compartmentalization of services may provide a convenient shelter for healthcare workers to be detached and to simply focus on a narrowly defined scope of intervention. However, the existential problems are still there. Based upon eastern philosophies and holistic health practices, we propose the body-mind-spirit approach in healthcare settings. This is a review paper summarizing the application of the approach on various clinical populations. The approach has been trialled with promising results in a number of health conditions and psychosocial predicaments. Spirituality is not restricted to any religious practices, nor is it narrowed to the pursuit of knowledge at a high level of abstraction. The interconnectedness of the body, mind and spirit presupposes that the practice of spirituality is multidimensional and multi-levelled. Using the body-mind-spirit framework flexibly we can engage more clients while facilitating the important process of exploration and change. The key components include getting in touch with the inner self, coming back to our senses, connecting our body and mind and rebalancing our relationship with the natural and social environment. The ultimate goal is to move out of meaninglessness and to reach a state of mature spirituality of tranquillity and transcendence. The practice of spirituality can be easily applied to daily life.

Diapers to Car Keys: The State of Spirituality, Religion and Work Research

The a priori “newness” of research in the spirituality, religion and work (SRW) field has been generally accepted, even though the domain of SRW credibly overlaps with well-established inquiry traditions, such as education, psychology, and theology. Because of this multi-disciplinary nature of SRW, we asked: How truly new is research work in this domain? Following the philosophy of science literature, this paper explores five hypotheses related to the research methodologies in all peer-reviewed empirical work published within the SRW domain during the initial years of its popular emergence, 1996–2000. Chi-square and text analysis (N=26) revealed mixed results with respect to hypothesized norms, and that many dynamic and varied empirical approaches are already in use within more established fields. Findings also suggest that work in the SRW domain may be further along than generally thought in the literature. Detailed discussion and implications for SRW research methodologies conclude the paper.

How September 11, 2001 Transformed My Course on Religious Pluralism, Spirituality, and Education

In the fall of 2001, I taught a seminar on religious and spiritual pluralism to a group of fifteen undergraduate and graduate students, all of whom were preparing to be educators, either in the public schools or in higher education. Because the course was an elective, all the students who enrolled in the seminar truly wanted to be there. The composition of the group ran the religio-spiritual gamut from Mainline Protestantism, to Evangelical Christianity, to liberation and feminist Catholicism, to Reform Judaism, to New Age spirituality, to atheism and agnosticism. The youngest student was 20 years of age, the oldest, 50. In 35 years of teaching at the university level, this was one of the most professionally rewarding courses I have ever taught. What brought us together, at the outset in late August, was our common interest in studying a number of the world’s major and minor religions in order to explore the current state of religion and spirituality in American culture, as well as its impact on our personal and professional lives. To this end I assigned a number of texts listed in the order that we read them: Why Religion Matters: The Fate of the Human Spirit in an Age of Disbelief; Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials: The Rise of Irrationalism and Perils of Piety; The Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief & Behavior During the University Years; God of the Oppressed; Encountering God: A Spiritual Journey from Bozeman to Banaras; Buddhism Without Beliefs; Why Christianity Must Change Or Die; and Faith, Hype, and Clarity: Teaching About Religion in American Schools and Colleges. 1 I intended for these readings to represent what I believe are the four dominant religio-spiritual narratives extant in the United States today: Orthodoxy, Social Justice, Alternative Spiritualities, and Post-Theism. 2 As the semester evolved, however, a purpose far more urgent than merely reading interesting texts and writing rigorous research papers emerged. And it ended up bringing all of us together in an unprecedented, common cause: Each of us, in our own ways, despite our differing religious,

The Battery and the Windmill: Two Models of Protestant Devotionalism in Early-Twentieth-Century America

In 1912, Andrew Murray, an influential spokesperson for the Keswick theology prevalent in American fundamentalism, decried the sorry state of spirituality among modern Christians. How many there are, he exclaimed, who “say that they have no time and that the heart desire for prayer is lacking; they do not know how to spend half an hour with God! … Day after day, month after month passes, and there is no time to spend one hour with God.” Closing his jeremiad, Murray exclaimed, “How many there are who take only five minutes for prayer!” A few years later, Herbert Willett and Charles Clayton Morrison, editors of The Christian Century, the voice of the emerging liberal movement in American Protestantism, published a daily devotional guide entitled The Daily Altar. Its purpose was to provide Christians with “a few moments of quiet and reflection” in the midst of “short and crowded days” in order to maintain a daily prayer life. To be precise, devotions in The Daily Altar took one and a half minutes to complete.