REA Annual Meeting 2019

"Kierkegaardian Incommensurability and Spiritual Dysphoria: Analysis of a Confliction on the Campuses of Catholic Colleges and Universities"
Noel Adams (Marquette University)

Research Interest Group. [Paper] Drawing on Kierkegaard's proposal that religious faith is incommensurable with a rational understanding of actuality, I contribute to the contemporary debate between two sides that articulate what it means for a university to be both truly modern and Catholic. Observing that today's Catholic universities are no longer typically comprised of mostly Catholic faculty or even mostly Catholic students, I articulate a new phenomenon on Catholic campuses: spiritual dysphoria. I argue that this arises from the actual conditions that are paradoxical in the way that Kierkegaard conceives of it.


Cultivating the Capacity for Moral Imagination: Developing a Constructive Postmodern Theological Curriculum in Higher Education
Tracey Lamont (Loyola University, New Orleans)

Research Interest Group. [Paper] Graduate students in ministry and religious education often discuss how challenging it is, in their ministries and in their personal lives, to engage with people who espouse an ideological worldview deeply different from their own. This study explores how religious educators in higher education can nurture the capacity for what John Paul Lederach calls the moral imagination by developing a constructive postmodern theological curriculum and teaching strategies that encourage dialogue across ideological difference.




Keywords: catholic identity, contingency, curriculum, higher education, ideology, incommensurability, moral imagination, national dialogue, pedagogy, plural religious education, praxis, religious education in plural society, religious pluralism, spiritual dysphoria, trans-religious education.