This exploration, directed toward an appreciative understanding of faith traditions, includes readings, reflection, discussion, and activities designed to help students experience, as though from the inside, the meaning of a given faith tradition for those who practice it. In the process students have the opportunity to reflect on and to deepen their understanding of and appreciation for their own spiritual and religious expressions. Readings for the course include a survey text in which contemporary adherents of the major religious traditions narrate their stories of faith. This course considers faith as both a personal and communal event and focuses on faith communities as carriers of spiritual wisdom and practices that can enrich life as well as inspire and sustain commitment to justice and peace. A central focus of the course is the story of Jesus as the story that firms, shapes and challenges Christian communities in their many and diverse expressions.
Special attention is given to ministry as an aspect of every Christian life.
In dialogue with the testimonies of contemporary Christians and the writings of theologians on faith and ministry, students will reflect on their own unique inner call to service and faithfulness in community. This course offers students an opportunity for dialogue with selected narratives of contemporary men and women who have lived qualitative human lives of prayer and service. The focal point of the course is reflective conversation with and about the story of Jesus as disclosure of what it means to live a truly human and spiritual life. In the process students seek to discern how they also might live meaningfully in relation to God, self, others and society, directing the energies of their lives in ways that will make the gospel a transformative power in today's world. Readings include current selected gospel narratives and spiritual writings and biographies that exemplify the way of discipleship.