Spiritual Interest Paper
The Spiritual Interest paper allows students to explore a topic of particular interest in the field of spirituality. The topic may be an historical person (deceased), such as a saint or public figure (St Teresa of Avila, Muhammad Ali, etc.), a text, such as one of the books in the class bibliography, a sacred text from any religious or spiritual tradition, or fiction, etc., or a contemporary situation, such as the local approach to homelessness, healthcare policy, etc.
The topic will be described according to the characteristics of spirituality (e.g., values, beliefs, practices; individual, communal, transcendent connections of perceived human flourishing) and analyzed according to the concepts of Little Stories and Big Stories or Imaginal Existence (Garcia Rivera 1995) or Community, Passion, and Hope (Gordon 2018, pp 97-102).
Make sure your topic is narrow enough to be able to investigate it in a meaningful way in three pages. For example, if you do a religious figure that has written several things, focus on one chapter, one speech or sermon, etc. If you are looking at a contemporary situation, perhaps look at one program that addresses that situation or one, one sermon, a specific period of time, etc.
Resource requirement: you will need to apply and reference at least one academic resource related to your topic and one class concept from Gordon or Garcia Rivera. An academic resource is one which is written by an academic scholar, contains references or footnotes, and is not an online blog. It must be published by an academic or professional peer-reviewed source (journal article or book).
