STML 5640 - Spiritual Values and Meaning in the Public Square

3 credit hours
Formerly - STML 564

This course explores the complex relationship of spiritual and religious values to the common life in the United States, particularly the symbols, meanings systems and cultural mythologies that have informed, and continue to inform, the nation’s life, rhetoric and political decision-making process. Employing tools and perspectives from a number of fields in the social sciences and humanities, this course will help students create their own template for understanding the complex impact spiritual and religious systems, ideas, feelings and individual and community forces have had in shaping America’s past and present. This course will also explore the social and cultural changes that are dramatically altering the relationship of religious and spiritual values to the public commons, particularly the introduction of new religions through changing immigration patterns beginning in the late 20th century. Students will devise strategies for integrating their leadership goals with their own spiritual and religious values, and the values permeating American society.