2008 Woodie Awards
Spirit and Spirituality: Welcome to the open spaced
Scott Pierce Coleman
Issue date: 9/2/05 Section: Forum
- Page 1 of 1
Welcome to a new space in the Guilfordian, set aside for this themed year. The Year of Spirit and Spirituality will hopefully invite, and sometimes challenge, us to consider substantive questions, individually and corporately. To aid and abet the dialogue among us, the Guilfordian and the Initiative on Faith and Practice would like to offer this space on a weekly basis.
If you would like to contribute an opinion piece on topics related to religion and spirituality (whether "pro" or "con"), please put down your thoughts in 475 to 500 words and submit them to Opinion Editor Becca Spence at rspence@guilford.edu. You might choose to react to or anticipate a theme year event, offer views you don't hear commonly discussed, or share questions that matter deeply to you.
Over the course of the year, we hope that students, staff, faculty and alumni will make use of this space to help the rest of us understand from the personal perspective of a believer the religious traditions represented on our campus - Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Paganism, etc.
We also hope that this space will be used to express views skeptical of religion and spirituality. Atheism deserves as much a place of honor during this year as any other belief system. No less, the conflict that many perceive between science and religion should be a prominent topic of discussion for us, in this space and elsewhere on campus.
At least one other important topic for our campus is the role of Quakerism at Guilford. Community members express diverging opinions about the College's religious heritage. The resulting tension is worthy of being brought into open debate so that we know more clearly who we are.
We do ask that writers express themselves with integrity and respect. Religion often polarizes people (the media-generated "red" and "blue" political map of the United States might also broadly describe a religious rift in America) and our community finds itself perhaps already more polarized than is healthy for an academic institution. One of the great challenges for us in the Year of Spirit and Spirituality will be to find ways of talking to each other about our differences without silencing each other.
If you are interested in writing, but uncertain about how to proceed, please feel free to contact any member of the Initiative staff. If you would like to comment on pieces that appear in this space, or on other aspects of your experience during the Year of Spirit and Spirituality, please contact us.
If you are comfortable having your comments used in print but not interested in writing an article yourself, we would be glad to offer an occasional opinion piece focused on the diverse views and reactions of folks around campus. In any case, we want to be as up-front as possible as we welcome you to the College's first major theme year!
If you would like to contribute an opinion piece on topics related to religion and spirituality (whether "pro" or "con"), please put down your thoughts in 475 to 500 words and submit them to Opinion Editor Becca Spence at rspence@guilford.edu. You might choose to react to or anticipate a theme year event, offer views you don't hear commonly discussed, or share questions that matter deeply to you.
Over the course of the year, we hope that students, staff, faculty and alumni will make use of this space to help the rest of us understand from the personal perspective of a believer the religious traditions represented on our campus - Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Paganism, etc.
We also hope that this space will be used to express views skeptical of religion and spirituality. Atheism deserves as much a place of honor during this year as any other belief system. No less, the conflict that many perceive between science and religion should be a prominent topic of discussion for us, in this space and elsewhere on campus.
At least one other important topic for our campus is the role of Quakerism at Guilford. Community members express diverging opinions about the College's religious heritage. The resulting tension is worthy of being brought into open debate so that we know more clearly who we are.
We do ask that writers express themselves with integrity and respect. Religion often polarizes people (the media-generated "red" and "blue" political map of the United States might also broadly describe a religious rift in America) and our community finds itself perhaps already more polarized than is healthy for an academic institution. One of the great challenges for us in the Year of Spirit and Spirituality will be to find ways of talking to each other about our differences without silencing each other.
If you are interested in writing, but uncertain about how to proceed, please feel free to contact any member of the Initiative staff. If you would like to comment on pieces that appear in this space, or on other aspects of your experience during the Year of Spirit and Spirituality, please contact us.
If you are comfortable having your comments used in print but not interested in writing an article yourself, we would be glad to offer an occasional opinion piece focused on the diverse views and reactions of folks around campus. In any case, we want to be as up-front as possible as we welcome you to the College's first major theme year!
