Recurrent debates about the church and higher education in the United States involve differing understandings of the nature and purpose of the church as well as differing understandings of the university. Catholic colleges and universities remain important but underutilized resources for the American church as it pursues its mission. Institutional, communitarian and servant models of the church must be examined more rigorously before they are used to prescribe changes in higher education. None is without problems. In a pluralistic and free society, a public church,” self-consciously mediating the tensions between Christian integrity, Catholic unity, and civic responsibility, provides an altogether appropriate stance for Catholic colleges and universities as well. It points not to a neat resolution of outstanding difficulties but to ongoing dialogue among the publics to which both church and higher education must address themselves.

In this article I address two intersecting and recurring debates that occur in discussions of religious education. The first issue has to do with the role of conversion in religious development. The second issue regards various educational philosophies and the priority they set on “content” or “process” in learning. After reviewing these debates I delineate the way in which I believe they intersect. By pointing out that development involves both “heritage” and “achievement” I clarify the relationship between conversion and development. Conversion involves both a transformation of the tradition one has inherited and the choosing of a direction for one's religious journey. Authentic religious education involves a healthy balance of tradition (content) and open-ended questioning (process). At the same time it must allow for the occurrence of conversion, a radical shift from inauthenticity, that may be startling and challenging to the educator, the educational system, and the tradition itself.

Psychology is a valuable resource for spirituality when researchers incorporate mutually critical correlations in their use of this discipline. It can be used to identify pathological elements in religious practice, uncover unconscious motivation, provide developmental schemas, and describe responses to meditative experiences. Researchers in spirituality will most likely draw on different schools of psychology in relationship to the particular phenomenon under investigation. Their critical perspective will uncover the presuppositions of psychologies that are either hostile to religion or neglect relationship to transcendence within their theories. Researchers in spirituality will want to retain a religious vocabulary and theological perspective.

This article evaluates the adequacy of Orthodox ethics by examining Orthodoxy's response to questions of social justice as they have been raised by the churches of the third world.

The Eastern tradition is skeptical of such phrases as “structures of injustice” because it is improper to speak of sin with regard to structures. This does not mean that Orthodoxy is insensitive to questions of social justice, but rather that such questions can only be properly addressed by a personalist ethic grounded in trinitarian theology. It is trinitarian theology that provides the foundation for an understanding of love, community, and human relationship which demands relationships of mutuality and reciprocity and rejects all forms of human domination. This ethic is arrived at by an examination of the mode of being of the triune God in which all Christians participate, a mode of being that is both personal and communal. Orthodox ethics, while still in need of development with regard to the problems of concrete moral decision-making, offers a rich theological foundation often lacking in the more philosophical-ethical tradition of the West.

Textbooks on world religions offer a vast amount of factual information that often overwhelms undergraduate students. Because they get lost in detail, the students find it difficult to appropriate the religious traditions into their own experience. Is there a different approach to the religions—one that does not get too bogged down in historical dates or various philosophical movements, yet still remains academically respectable—that might better help them to appreciate the religious traditions? I want to suggest that one possible method might be to study selected key passages from the scriptures of the various religions, in particular their stories (rather than other literary forms). Such stories, whether narratives or parables, exist in the scriptures of all the major world religions. Carefully selected for their transformative and paradigmatic power, these stories easily lead into discussions of doctrines, rituals, ethics, and the other phenomenological dimensions of religion. More importantly, certain basic themes in these stories—desire for the direct experience of God, forgiveness, martyrdom, duty, balance of self-nature-society, and self-forgetfulness, for example—transcend their formulation in any one specific world religion. Student awareness of these and other archetypal themes is a healthy step in appropriating the cultural and spiritual life of their own religious traditions.