This article discusses the possibilities of teaching spiritual care in an interfaith context, notably in the Netherlands. It first explores the background processes of deinstitutionalization and pluralization, resulting in a fragmented religious landscape. The change in nomenclature from pastoral care to spiritual care in part reflects these changes. The middle part of the article describes key features of spiritual care from different traditions. It starts with Christian views of spiritual care (historically the oldest in this context) and then discusses how secular/Humanist, Muslim, Buddhist, and Hindu perspectives not only add to the picture of spiritual care, but challenge its key notions. The final part discusses options of intrafaith and interfaith approaches of spiritual care and ends with a description of the curriculum the authors developed to accommodate students from a variety of denominational backgrounds in a rich interfaith learning environment.
This contribution studies the notion of single and multiple religious belonging in a sample of 265 Dutch respondents. We will first focus on modalities of religious belonging and subsequently compare those who claim to draw from just one religion (the monoreligious) with those who indicate that they combine elements from different religious traditions (the multireligious) in terms of their intensities and styles of belonging, loyalty and mobility, and motivations for belonging. In general, multireligious respondents are characterized by their larger flexibility in religious matters as they tend to focus on similarities and common elements in different religions, and less on boundaries between them. By being loyal to themselves in the first place, they feel free to adopt and to leave behind religious beliefs and communities. Emotional and institutional bonds for each religion appear to be less strong than for monoreligious individuals in relation to their single religion.
In the religiously pluralized Western world, a trend called 'Multiple Religious Belonging' (MRB) has been identified. Although it is a much theologically debated concept, empirical research on the practice of MRB is limited. The present research project therefore explores the phenomenon of MRB among visitors of Dominican spiritual centers in the Netherlands (n=472). It investigates to what extent and in which ways such visitors combine elements from more than one religious tradition in their lives and what they perceive to be the benefits of combining elements. It links this information to their views on religion, the resources they draw from, their (religiously diverse) networks, and their motivations for attending spiritual activities. The results indicate that respondents who combine elements from more than one religious tradition ('combiners') are more likely than 'non-combiners' to: a) see religion as something that is constantly changing during the life course; b) have networks which are religiously diverse; c) place importance on nature, in-depth conversations, personal rituals or practices, and theological, philosophical, and spiritual texts as resources; d) be motivated to attend spiritual centers because of a focus on self-exploration.
An important subset of the phenomenon of multiple religious belonging is that of BuddhistChristian belonging: people who claim to belong to, owe allegiance to or believe in both the Buddhist and Christian faiths. This phenomenon has not yet been the subject of much normative theological investigation, as opposed to descriptive and empirically-oriented social scientific study. Recently, however, two theological studies have appeared on dual Buddhist-Christian belonging: Rose Drew's Buddhist and Christian? and the collection of essays Buddhist-Christian Dual Belonging. From a theological point of view, is it possible to be authentically both Buddhist and Christian? Rose Drew has formulated two demands that can be applied in investigating such a theological question. In this article, I will first critically assess several possible strategies for dealing with those two demands, and then explore an approach to Zen-Christian dual belonging that focuses on the practice of apophasis.
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