Sacred Visions and the Social Good

Sacred Visions and the Social Good

Sacred Visions and the Social Good is a program of Dominican University and the Graduate Theological Union which builds networks of collaboration between academic and practitioner communities in Marin and the Bay Area.

Scholars, community practitioners and their organizations will engage in community research, program development, and public outreach on the ways that faith traditions and ethical discourses contribute to wider visions and practices of the social good.

In particular, the program is interested in learning how sacred traditions mobilize their members into practices of public engagement, how deeper ecumenical and interfaith cooperation can generate shared visions and practices, and how multiple faith visions contribute to a broad spiritual and ethical framework for a just, sustainable, and pluralistic democracy.

Project Objectives:

1. Community-based research or programs around faith and public life
2. Interfaith collaborations around shared spiritual and ethical visions
3. Roundtable discussions of project implications for public discourse.

Phase I: Exploratory Phase

During Phase I of the program, early 2005, a number of interviews and on line surveys were conducted with representative scholars and community practitioners in religion, to identify the goals of increased scholar-practitioner collaboration in issues of religion and public life that explore how specific religious communities mobilize members to help build a public ethical and spiritual framework that is committed to justice, sustainability, and a pluralistic democracy.

Outcome: Proposal for Mission, Goals and project criteria.

Phase II: Design and Implementation

Phase II of the program includes the implementation of three distinct projects:

1. a community-based project that explores faith-based motivations in community organizing or service
2. an  interfaith project that explores how two faith communities collaborate around identified public issues, and
3. a faith based project of how a particular religious community sought to impact public issues in their community.

Phase III: Interpretation, Reporting and Generating Dialogue

Phase III of the program is designed to complete the coordination of the three projects, enhance roundtable discussions between project coordinators, practitioners, and research consultants, and to finalize reporting that can be useful to other faith communities and researchers in the Bay Area.

1. Patterns of collaboration between scholars, religious communities, and agencies;
2. Emerging themes of interpretation and challenge between the projects.
3. Religious motivations that influence people to be involved in public life;
4. Symbolic migration of language and practice from one faith community to others & public