Higher Education Reaches Toward Higher Power

Or, how modern colleges and universities are finding ways to integrate interfaith dialogues into a post-modern curriculum.

Last November, the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA played host to “faculty, staff and administrators from 10 colleges and universities across the country” who gathered to discuss and develop their ideas about the integration of spirituality and higher education.

According to this article in yesterday’s LA Times, the HERI was responding to studies that showed “large majorities of American undergraduates are interested in spirituality or searching for meaning in their lives.” The project was called “Spirituality in Higher Education” and was founded four years ago to help address the undergraduate trend toward exploring questions of life’s meaning, purpose, and value.

A 2004 institute study of entering college freshmen nationwide found that four of every five had an interest in spirituality, three-fourths were searching for meaning or purpose in life and more than three-fourths — 79% — believed in God.

“The research shows that many are searching for something larger than themselves,” [project director Jennifer] Lindholm said.

And the wheel continues to turn. Once eschewed from university curriculae as “superstition” or “religious oppression,” spirituality makes its return to college life as young people reject the echoing emptiness of a strictly secular education. The inherent “interfaith” or “multifaith” approach to the program promises much for those who have worked hard to bring tolerance, respect, and acceptance to the forefront of consciousness for all religions.

It’s a lovely antidote to repression and fundamentalism precisely because the programs developed will actively “underscore that this is not to indoctrinate or validate one belief or another, including non-belief,” as Lindholm said elsewhere in the interview. By emphasing exploration and dialogue, these curriculae could go a long way toward weaning humanity away from its unfortunate fundamentalist roots.