How Jesuit education can help students create meaningful connections in an age of secularism

In A Secular Age, the philosopher Charles Taylor challenges us to appreciate the significance of genuine spiritual experience in human life, an occurrence he refers to as “fullness.” Western societies, however, are increasingly becoming more secular, and personal occasions of fullness are becoming less possible.

In Jesuit Higher Education in a Secular Age, Daniel S. Hendrickson, SJ, shows how Jesuit education can respond to the crisis of modernity by offering three pedagogies of fullness: study, solidarity, and grace. A pedagogy of study encourages students to explore their full range of thoughts and emotions to help amplify their self-awareness, while a pedagogy of solidarity helps them relate to the lives of others, including disparate cultural and socioeconomic realities. Together, these two pedagogies cultivate an openness in students that can help them achieve a pedagogy of grace, which validates their awareness of and receptivity to the extraordinary spiritual Other that impacts our lives.

Hendrickson demonstrates how this Jesuit imaginary—inspired by the Renaissance humanistic origins of Jesuit pedagogy—educates students toward a better self-awareness, a stronger sense of global solidarity, and a greater aptitude for inspiration, awe, and gratitude.

Daniel S. Hendrickson, SJ, is the president of Creighton University. His leadership focuses on the university’s global reach, the importance of studies in the liberal arts, and the expansion of Creighton’s mission in the US Southwest. He has worked and lived in the Caribbean, East Africa, and India. He has served on the boards of Boston College, Xavier University, the Institute for Latin American Concern, and Jesuit Worldwide Learning.

How Jesuit education can help students create meaningful connections in an age of secularism

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Jesuit Higher Education and the Restoration of Enchantment

1. The Search for Fullness in a Secular Age

2. Developing Taylor’s Conception of Fullness

3. Charles Taylor in Educational Discourse

4. Renaissance Humanistic Backgrounds of Jesuit Educational Thought

5. The Tradition of Jesuit Education

6. Higher Education in a Secular Age

7. Forming a Learned Imagination

Bibliography

Index

About the Author