In today’s pluralistic world, many cultures feel a shift in the relationship of people with religious traditions. A corresponding movement is a resurgence of interest in human spirituality. This Handbook presents the views of education scholars who engage these concepts every day, in a collection of essays reflecting the international state of the discipline. Out of these rises a vision for the emergence of a just and peaceful world.
"Beyond Religion" is a stirring call to move beyond religion for the guidance to improve human life on individual, community, and global levels--including a guided meditation practice for cultivating key human values.
The essays in The Philosophy of Spirituality explore a new field in philosophy. Until recently, most philosophers in the analytic and continental Western traditions treated spirituality as a religious concept. Any non-religious spirituality tended to be neglected or dismissed as irremediably vague. Here, from various philosophical and cultural perspectives, it is addressed as a subject of independent interest. This is a philosophical response to increasing numbers of spiritual but not religious people inhabiting secular societies and the heightened interaction between a multitude of spiritual traditions in a globalized age. A provocative array of approaches (African, Indigenous, Indian, Stoic, and Sufic perspectives, as well as Western analytic and continental views) offer fresh insights, many articulated by emerging voices. Contributors are Mariapaola Bergomi, Moses Biney, Christopher Braddock, Drew Chastain, Kerem Eksen, Nikolay Milkov, Roderick Nicholls, Jerry Piven, Heather Salazar, Eric Steinhart, Richard White, Mark Wynn and Eric Yang.
This book deals with the multiple problem of education in the public schools as it relates to moral and spiritual values. The author cuts a wide swath through the tangled underbrush of church and state, religion and education, sacred and secular, spiritual and materialistic, "body and soul," and lets in a lot of light. To these problems the author brings a lifetime of courageous reflection and experience. To them he also brings, as case studies, the actual experiences of actual children and teachers in actual classrooms in Kentucky, where an experimental program of education in moral and spiritual values has been in process for the past several years.
Spirituality, Religion, and Aging: Illuminations for Therapeutic Practice by Holly Nelson-Becker is a highly integrative book written for students, professionals in aging, ministers, and older adults themselves. Readers will gain the knowledge and skills they need to assess, engage, and address the spiritual and religious needs of older persons. Taking a fresh approach that breaks new ground in the field, the author discusses eight major world religions and covers values and ethics, theories, interventions, health and caregiving, depression and anxiety, dementia, and the end of life. Meditations and exercises throughout the book allow readers to expand and explore their personal understanding of spirituality. Referencing the latest research, the book includes assessments and skill-based tools designed to help practitioners enhance the mental health of older people.
This volume reviews the exploding religion/spirituality (R/S) and health literature from a population health perspective. It emphasizes the distinctive Public Health concern for promoting health and preventing disease in societies, nations, and communities, as well as individuals. Part I offers a rigorous review of mainstream biomedical and social scientific theory and evidence on R/S-health relations. Addressing key gaps in previous literature, it reviews evidence from a population health viewpoint, surveying pertinent findings and theories from the perspective of Public Health subfields that range from Environmental Health Sciences to Public Health Nutrition to Health Policy & Management and Public Health Education. In Part II, practitioners describe in detail how attending to R/S factors enhances the work of clinicians and community health practitioners. R/S provides an additional set of concepts and tools to address opportunities and challenges ranging from behavior and institutional change to education, policy, and advocacy. Part III empowers educators, analyzing pedagogical needs and offering diverse short chapters by faculty who teach R/S-health connections in many nationally top-ranked Schools of Public Health. International and global perspectives are highlighted in a concluding chapter and many places throughout the volume. This book addresses a pressing need for Public Health research, practice and teaching: A substantial evidence base now links religious and spiritual (R/S) factors to health. In the past 20 years, over 100 systematic reviews and 30 meta-analyses on R/S-health were published in refereed journals. But despite this explosion of interest, R/S factors remain neglected in Public Health teaching and research. Public Health lags behind related fields such as medicine, psychology, and nursing, where R/S factors receive more attention. This book can help Public Health catch up. It offers abundant key resources to empower public health professionals, instructors, and students to address R/S, serving at once as a course text, a field manual and a research handbook.
A bold reevaluation of Spinoza that reveals his powerful, inclusive vision of religion for the modern age Spinoza is widely regarded as either a God-forsaking atheist or a God-intoxicated pantheist, but Clare Carlisle says that he was neither. In Spinoza’s Religion, she sets out a bold interpretation of Spinoza through a lucid new reading of his masterpiece, the Ethics. Putting the question of religion centre-stage but refusing to convert Spinozism to Christianity, Carlisle reveals that “being in God” unites Spinoza’s metaphysics and ethics. Spinoza’s Religion unfolds a powerful, inclusive philosophical vision for the modern age—one that is grounded in a profound questioning of how to live a joyful, fully human life. Like Spinoza himself, the Ethics doesn’t fit into any ready-made religious category. But Carlisle shows how it wrestles with the question of religion in strikingly original ways, responding both critically and constructively to the diverse, broadly Christian context in which Spinoza lived and worked. Philosophy itself, as Spinoza practiced it, became a spiritual endeavor that expressed his devotion to a truthful, virtuous way of life. Offering startling new insights into Spinoza’s famously enigmatic ideas about eternal life and the intellectual love of God, Carlisle uncovers a Spinozist religion that integrates self-knowledge, desire, practice, and embodied ethical life to reach toward our “highest happiness”—to rest in God. Seen through Carlisle’s eyes, the Ethics prompts us to rethink not only Spinoza but also religion itself.
It has been suggested that 'spirituality' has become a word that 'can define an era'. Why? Because paradoxically, alongside a decline in traditional religious affiliations, the growing interest in spirituality and the use of the word in a variety of contexts is a striking aspect of contemporary western cultures. Indeed, spirituality is sometimes contrasted attractively with religion, although this is problematic and implies that religion is essentially dogma, moralism, institutions, buildings, and hierarchies. The notion of spirituality expresses the fact that many people are driven by goals that concern more than material satisfaction. Broadly, it refers to the deepest values and sense of meaning by which people seek to live. Sometimes these values are conventionally religious. Sometimes they are associated with what is understood as 'the sacred' in a broader sense - that is, of ultimate rather than merely instrumental importance. This Very Short Introduction, written by one of the most eminent scholars and writers on spirituality, explores the historical foundations of the thought and considers how it came to have the significance it is developing today. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
In this book, experts in the field discuss how spiritual and religious issues can be successfully integrated into counseling in a manner that is respectful of client beliefs and practices. Designed as an introductory text for counselors-in-training and clinicians, it describes the knowledge base and skills necessary to effectively engage clients in an exploration of their spiritual and religious lives to further the therapeutic process. Through an examination of the 2009 ASERVIC Competencies for Addressing Spiritual and Religious Issues in Counseling and the use of evidence-based tools and techniques, this book will guide you in providing services to clients presenting with these deeply sensitive and personal issues. Numerous strategies for clinical application are offered throughout the book, and new chapters on mindfulness, ritual, 12-step spirituality, prayer, and feminine spirituality enhance application to practice. *Requests for digital versions from the ACA can be found on wiley.com. *To request print copies, please visit the ACA website here: https://imis.counseling.org/store/detail.aspx?id=78161 *Reproduction requests for material from books published by ACA should be directed to [email protected]
Over the past ten years, the fields of social work and education have grappled separately with definitions of spirituality, ways to integrate spirituality into the classroom, and the rendering of spirituality as a meaningful concept for practitioners, students, and researchers. Social work and education have many commonalities in areas of engagement with children, families, and communities. For the first time, this book brings together these two professional disciplines for interdisciplinary discussions that advance our knowledge in the broad area of “spirituality.” The book’s three sections reflect broad topic areas created to facilitate dialogue between the contributors, all of whom have established expertise in exploring spirituality in education or social work. The first section of the book explores the historical and theoretical underpinnings of spirituality in education and social work. Examination of our respective heritages uncovers the religious roots within our professions and reveals a present understanding of spirituality that calls for active engagement in challenging oppression and working toward social justice. The second section shifts the focus to the pedagogical implications of incorporating spirituality into higher-education classrooms. The varied level of acceptance and the tensions that come from including spirituality, implicitly or explicitly, in the programs and coursework in our respective faculties are illuminated by authors in both professions. The final section explores issues related to practising and teaching in the field from a spiritually sensitive perspective.
