What religion(s) are you personally most familiar with? How is your involvement with religion today different from how it was when you were growing up? What are your hopes and expectations for this course? How might this course challenge you: intellectually, spiritually, academically or otherwise? How do you plan to address those challenges ...
Feb 25, 2014 · Some feel religion courses at BYU should be graded on a pass-or-fail basis. According to Pike, the BYU Board of Trustees and Administration shut down a debate several years ago about formatting ...
Transformation Project, (our national program on religion, spirituality, and higher education,) we have been exploring ways that academics, administrators, student life staff, and students can engage questions of religion and spirituality from an educational perspective. For decades, conversations about religion and spirituality in higher education
Artboard 1. The Challenge of Intellectual and Spiritual Growth. Listen. T he work of winning souls to Christ demands careful preparation. Men cannot enter the Lord's service without the needed training, and expect the highest success. Mechanics, lawyers, merchants, men of all trades and professions, are educated for the line of business ...
"Mental culture is what we as a people need, and what we must have in order to meet the demands of the time. Poverty, humble origin, and unfavorable surroundings need not prevent the cultivation of the mind. .
"He who discerns the opportunities and privileges of his work will allow nothing to stand in the way of earnest endeavor for self-improvment. He will spare no pains to reach the highest standard of excellence."—Education, p. 281.
This portion of the definition seems equally suited for religious education. So much of religion is based on personal experience and reflection on those experiences. Owing to the personal nature of religious observations, experiences, reflections, and reasoning, adherents often find them difficult to fully explain.
Due to the value attributed to those experiences, a person may not choose to share them frequently because of a fear that others will not understand or may even attempt to degrade and minimize those experiences and the feelings associated with them.
They include the following: religions often claim to contain some amount of absolute truth, an idea in itself that critical theorists oppose; individual religions generally do not teach alternate views, a requisite for critical thinking; and, in critical theory, truth is comprised of “premises all parties accept.”.
The Gospel Teaching and Learning handbook, used by teachers and leaders in the Seminaries and Institutes of Religion program of the Church, sets forth the “fundamentals of gospel teaching and learning.”.
Another belief included by some in a definition of critical thinking, though at odds with the edifying instruction presented in LDS religious education, is addressed by Rajeswari Mohan, who suggests that to teach using critical thinking would require “a re-understanding of the classroom.”.
In Educating Reason, author Harvey Siegel responds to a criticism sometimes waged against critical thinking called the indoctrination objection. His argument provides a means for reconciling faith with logic. In short he observed that critical thinkers have traditionally been opposed to indoctrination of any kind.
Here critical theorists Michael Scriven and Richard Paul endeavor to encapsulate in one definition the wide expanse of critical thinking’s many definitions: “Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/ or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.” [6]
When undertaking the academic study of religion, Gary Kessler, author of Studying Religion, asserts that there are 5 valuable skills that we need to cultivate: openness, honesty (about our biases), critical intelligence, careful observing, and critical tolerance.
However, that process of personal/informal evaluation and study is fairly different from studying religion academically.
That was perhaps because there was some history of religious antipathy among early psychology leaders such as Sigmund Freud and B.F. Skinner, or perhaps because psychologists generally lack training in this area.
A growing body of research has linked these spiritual struggles to higher levels of psychological distress, declines in physical health and even greater risk of mortality. Thus, it is important for psychologists and other health care ...
Pargament: The old saying that there are no atheists in foxholes is not really true. Before, during and after combat, we can find atheists who consistently hold to their orientation. It is true, though, that people often do turn to their faith as a source of solace and support in their most stressful moments.
Empirical studies of many groups dealing with major life stressors such as natural disaster, illness, loss of loved ones, divorce and serious mental illness show that religion and spirituality are generally helpful to people in coping, especially people with the fewest resources facing the most uncontrollable of problems.
These positive religious coping methods include spiritual support from God or a higher power, rituals to facilitate life transitions, spiritual forgiveness, support from a religious institution or clergy and reframing a stressful situation into a larger, more benevolent system of meaning.
On the other hand, some forms of religious and spiritual coping can be more problematic. Life events can shake and shatter people spiritually as well as psychologically, socially and physically. People may struggle spiritually with their understanding of God, with inner conflicts or with other people.
Finally, emerging research is showing that spiritually integrated approaches to treatment are as effective as other treatments. There is, in short, good scientifically based reason to be more sensitive to religion and spirituality in clinical practice. Psychologists are now developing and evaluating a variety of spiritually integrated approaches ...
Practically speaking, religious studies can enable students to better practice the task of selfhood by both building self-esteem and making possible the acquisition of competencies crucial for one's well-being in increasingly diverse world cultures.
Religious Studies is intellectually exciting because it provides access to the mystery of the other. Religion is one of the primary disciplines for investigating the boundary questions of life and death, of love and hate, that characterize the human condition.
Religious Studies is personally meaningful because it raises questions of purpose and value along with developing important life skills.
You are of God, He’s absolutely interested in every aspect of your entire life. You should not operate your academic life away from God.
You should be aware that you need the discipline to strike that balance you need between your spiritual and academic life.
I know you have a long to-do list. Getting to manage them all may seem like a herculean task.
Getting to move and develop a good and close relationship with other Christian students is a good advantage. You can all get to study together and also fellowship together.
Distractions that can waste your time should be avoided. Whatever will take your time without any productivity or impact is not worth the time.
Be consistent with your studies, don’t cumulate notes till examinations or tests comes around. Study well. Do assignments on time, don’t miss classes.