Most Common Teacher Characteristics Related to Intentionality in Student Spiritual Formation

Teachers have the important commission of guiding students in their spiritual formation, which is the process through which an individual accepts Jesus Christ as Savior and continually becomes more like Him. Given this task, Christian teachers are able to be intentional within classroom management, through instruction, and by modeling. Teachers from 50 schools within the Southeast Region of the Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI) were asked to complete a survey regarding intentional practices for student spiritual formation. With a Likert scale, a rating system, and open-ended questions, a triangulation method was used to find the most common characteristics related to spiritual formation intentionality. The characteristics found to be most common included “exhibiting a Christ-like attitude”, “creating a classroom climate that promotes spiritual growth”, and “being intentional in the spiritual disciplines”. By being intentional in these areas, the teacher is able to be that agent that fosters and guides student spiritual formation.     

Christian School Leaders and Spirituality: A Reaction to Banke,Maldonado, and Lacey

Banke, Maldonado, and Lacey (2012) found evidence to suggest that the experiences of Christian school leaders affect their roles as spiritual leaders because learning from various prior experiences aided these leaders on how to be better spiritual leaders. Argued herein is that this conclusion “begs the question” because the conclusion that the authors attempt to prove is included in the initial premise of their argument. This approach perhaps explains why the authors purposefully nominated participants for the study and made other simplifying assumptions such as equating servant leadership to spiritual leadership, equating protestant Christians to all Christian denominations, equating Christian school leaders to spiritual leaders, and equating Christian primary and secondary school leaders to Christian college and University leaders.     

Exploring mystery: can Christian meditation at school nurture students’ relationships with God?

ABSTRACT

While there is growing international interest in meditation and mindfulness initiatives in schools, little research has focused on exploring the impact of such practices on students’ spirituality. This paper reports data from a mixed method study involving primary school classes engaged in the regular practice of Christian meditation between Years 4 to 6 in Catholic schools in New South Wales, Australia. Student focus group data (n = 114 students) and a student survey (n = 250 students) suggest Christian meditation offers an inclusive and ‘hospitable’ space for many students, where their spiritual well-being can be nurtured, including their connection to God. However, the findings suggest that accompanying dialogue with students around the purpose and possibilities of Christian meditation may help to better situate the practice as a ‘hospitable space’ thus enabling deeper engagement with the spiritual in contemporary Catholic classrooms.     

Christian practices in urban clinical pastoral education

This article addresses primarily a connecting link in ministerial formation through the incorporation of certain practices of Christianity within an urban CPE curriculum and the impact on the development of pastoral identity and pastoral practice. Though the focus is identified as Christian the implications and practices are adaptable within all religious and spiritual traditions. The student groups of this urban CPE program represent a wide diversity of cultures and religious traditions and an equal representation of men and women.     

Coming to America for Spiritual or Academic Growth? Experiences of International Students at One Christian School

The number of international students flocking to North American private Christian schools has continued to grow. The author examined the overall experiences of 67 international high school students studying at a private Christian school in South Carolina. Their frustrations and struggles with academic and spiritual growth in a new cross-cultural setting, their reasons for coming to study in the United States at their own expense, as well as their motivations to come to the United States were investigated. The findings signified that none of the participants came to the Christian school for a Christian education, but for a good academic education and a bright future. In addition, the absence of their home cultures, the lack of academic language, and the large culture distance contributed to their frustrations and struggles in the process of adaptation to the new school environment.     

Use of religious and spiritual interventions by trainees in APA-accredited Christian clinical psychology programs

Little is known about the effectiveness of Christian clinical programs accredited by the American Psychological Association in training students to use religious and spiritual interventions in therapy. We surveyed 162 student therapists from three such programs regarding their training experiences and use of religious and spiritual interventions. Self-reported competency and use of religious and spiritual interventions correlated with a number of training components. However, none of the training components predicted unique variance in regression equations above and beyond that of general professional training, personal religiousness, and intervention-specific training. Suggestions are offered regarding intervention-specific training in both Christian and secular programs, the role of personal therapy in training, and the development of guidelines for competency in using religious and spiritual interventions.     

Teaching the College “Nones”: Christian Privilege and the Religion Professor

Working with undergraduate students invites teachers into relationship and conversation with young people at a time when they are emerging as adults and forming their identities. Faith is one area of identity formation often attended to by scholars, college professors, and their institutions. But within that, little attention has been paid to those who do not identify as religious. Additionally, “the overwhelming presence of Christianity at American institutions maintains it as the spiritual norm on campus. … Those within the spiritual norm gain a level of privilege that is often unconscious” (Seifert 2007, 11). This has an effect not only on nonreligious students but on any student who identifies as anything other than Christian; and it has a unique effect on teaching and learning in the religion classroom. In this article, I will explain what Christian privilege is, why it is a unique problem in the undergraduate religion classroom, and what teachers of religion might do in response to it. In the end, I argue that educators need to better understand the effects of Christian privilege in our classrooms and become allies to the nonreligious in particular by using pedagogies that include and support all students, in their many religious affiliations and unaffiliations.     

Opposition from Christians to Myers–Briggs personality typing: an analysis and evaluation

Myers–Briggs personality typing is widely used in the Christian church as an aid to individual self‐understanding and spiritual formation. However, some Christian leaders have expressed doubt about its validity in understanding human personality and also opposition to its use in nurturing spiritual growth. The aim of the work reported was to identify and examine the reasons for this negative stance towards personality typing. It was achieved by content analysis of published writings and, in a few cases, by correspondence with persons known to have a critical stance. The analysis showed five principal areas of concern: misuse of personality typing in spiritual formation; personality typing as a simplistic analysis; personality typing as a restrictive pigeon‐holing; unethical use of personality typing; and the Jungian derivation of personality type theory. Evaluation of this unease reveals significant semantic and epistemological issues and also a concern that personality typing, while not denying the tenets of Christian belief, could rival them for primacy in the hearts and minds of Christians.     

Educational models of spiritual formation in theological education: Introspection‐based spiritual formation

Given that spiritual formation of students is a key pursuit of theological training and in light of the evolving landscape of Christian spiritual formation, designing an effective educational model for the goal of students' formation is challenging. This article explores the educational means and factors of self‐awareness that enhance spiritual formation. Based on a review of the most recent literature, this article intends to synthesize their theories and findings to provide an introspection‐based spiritual formation model that focuses on students' self‐awareness development with the goal of spiritual formation in theological education.     

Democracy and spiritual awareness: interconnections and implications for educational leadership

This article sets out theorisations of developmental democracy and spiritual awareness formulated in previous work by the authors. These are used to explore collegial leadership in a case study Steiner school, with the aim of illuminating and illustrating the transformative demands of developmental democracy and its interconnection with spiritual awareness. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for imbuing democratised educational leadership with spiritual energy and fashioning and leading a school environment that reflects the model of developmental democracy.     

Urban American Indian Youth Spirituality and Religion: A Latent Class Analysis

This article explores the interconnected spiritual, religious, and cultural worlds of the majority of American Indian (AI) youth who live in urban areas: their patterns of involvement in religion and Native spirituality and associated well‐being. Latent class analysis of data from 205 AI middle school students identified five distinctive classes using survey measures of religious affiliation, attendance at services, adherence to Christian and traditional spiritual beliefs, Native spirituality, and Native cultural practices. Two classes were Christian groups: one attending Christian churches and following Christian beliefs but uninvolved with Native beliefs, spirituality, or cultural practices; and a nominal Christian group affiliated with but not attending church and unattached to belief systems. Two groups followed Native beliefs and spiritual practices, one affiliated with the Native American Church and another unaffiliated with any church. The fifth, nonreligious group, had no religious affiliation, followed neither Christian nor traditional beliefs, and was uninvolved in Native spirituality and cultural practices. The two groups embracing AI spirituality reported better academic performance, more reservation contact, higher AI enculturation, and stronger bicultural orientations.     

Sexuality,Angelification, and Divine Indwelling: A Contemporary Ethic of Early Christian Asceticism

The monastic movement originated among laity who recognized within themselves the potential to embody the Christian gospel. That a practice so central to early Christians and their Scriptural understanding would undergo such a decline contemporarily gives pause for reconsideration. This article posits that the kind of asceticism at the core of Christian monasticism maintains relevance as a transformative Christian practice in the contemporary world, as well. The argument draws on a tripartite model of spirituality in accord with Gregory of Nyssa’s notion of epektasis. This suggests asceticism’s contemporary appropriation as an ethic of Christian spiritual development oriented toward perpetual ascent. Asceticism will be analyzed as a form of spiritual struggle; that is, physical, emotional, psychological, intellectual, and spiritual exertion aiming to progress in knowledge, similitude, and intimacy with Jesus Christ, for God and for others. The three stages of this ethic of Christian spiritual growth – 1) detachment from fleshly passions, 2) strengthening of the soul, and 3) union with God – find parallels in the three themes at the core of asceticism: sexuality, angelification, and divine indwelling. Situating asceticism within a framework of spiritual struggle creates an opportunity to recover and re-envision a well-established Christian practice in a contemporary context.     

FEMINIST SOCIAL PROCESS

Abstract

A qualitative semi-structured interview was used to explore the interaction between Christian women's sexuality and spirituality and the impact of sex-negative messages on sexual and spiritual development of 10 Caucasian, middle-aged Christian women. A salient feature of this negative interaction was the women's attempts to reduce the dissonance between their sexuality and spirituality, which reflected a developmental process. Results are discussed in terms of the difficulty Christian women face in being able to integrate their sexuality and spirituality. The study revealed that integration is not an end but an ongoing process. Clinical implications and recommendations for future research are offered.     

Spiritual development in church schools—a survey of Welsh head teachers’ perceptions

A questionnaire to assess views about spiritual development was completed by 112 of the 174 head teachers of church primary schools in Wales. The findings indicated that despite the seemingly ambiguous nature of the term ‘spiritual development’, head teachers had clear views about its meaning. While most head teachers emphasised the need for pupils to engage in their own personal spiritual search, their views differed in the extent to which they felt that promoting spiritual development meant encouraging pupils to adopt Christian beliefs. While the age and sex of head teachers was found to have no significant impact on their views; and the location and category of the school for which head teachers were responsible had only a limited impact on their view, the language of the school and the religiosity of the head teacher had a considerable impact on views regarding these matters.     

Biblical Fidelity of Christian School Textbooks

A reasonable expectation of textbooks used in Christian schools is that they should regularly incorporate biblical content. It is also reasonable to expect the biblical content to be integrated—not segregated—to influence matters such as worldview, biblical relevance, character, and integrative skills. This expectation was tested via a representative sampling of 15 texts across a span of elementary, middle, and high school grades and representative content areas from eight Christian schools in the eastern Virginia region. Important findings include: close to half the texts used in the schools were from non-Christian publishers; textbooks from Christian publishers were predominantly from only two companies; the adequacy of textbook worldview scores is not in alignment with research showing major student deficiency in Christian worldviews; and approximately half of the scores for Christian textbooks were below the minimally acceptable level.     

Cultivating Christians: North American family cultures and religious identity formation

North American Christian families face many challenges as they try to live faithfully in an intercultural, multi-religious, secularising world, particularly with regard to the formation of religious identity in children. Answering the question of how children become Christian is more complicated today than it was for previous generations because adults cannot assume that the Christian vestiges of a civil religion will be sufficient to help children embrace a robust sense of themselves as God’s beloved and called people in a divinely created world. Thus, this essay explores what social science research and theological reflection might offer religious leaders as frameworks and tools for encouraging family cultures that cultivate young Christians, focusing particularly on strategies for sharing religious language, communicating beliefs and values, modelling spiritual practices, encountering symbolic images, and participating in congregational life.     

Spirituality in nursing theory and practice: dilemmas for Christian bioethics.

Moral strangerhood is due in part to competing worldviews. The profession of nursing is experiencing a paradigm shift which creates ethical dilemmas for both Christian nurses and Christian patients. Nursing's new focus on spirituality and spiritual care presents itself as broadly defining a desired state or patient outcome -- spiritual integrity -- supposed to be applicable to all patients of all faiths. Analysis of nursing's definition of spirituality reveals assumptions and values consistent with an Eastern/New Age worldview which may cause hostility towards Christian patients stereotyped as dogmatic or noncompliant.     

‘Wounded by the Arrow of Beauty’: The Silent Call of Art

One of the urgent tasks facing Christian educators at the present time is how they might encourage the spiritual growth of their students. This paper invites reflection on this central question by discussing the role aesthetics might play with particular focus on its relationship to the ‘spiritual senses’, a theme which has been strikingly absent from recent publications on religion and Christian education. Paying particular attention to the work of the contemporary French phenomenologist, Jean‐Louis Chrétien, I shall argue that art invites us to listen to as well as to see the power of beauty. Educators should not ignore this capacity of art to engage the spiritual senses within a contemplative ethos of silence. But I go further than simply pointing to these seminal ideas about Christian formation, by discussing the ‘wound’ that beauty inevitably inflicts. I illustrate this suggestion by referring to Pope Benedict XVI's essay ‘Wounded by the Arrow of the Beautiful’ and to two visualizations of religion: Delacroix's painting Fight between Jacob and the Angel and Beauvois' film Of Gods and Men.