Mystery, Humility and Religious Practice in the Thought of St John of the Cross

The ”dark night of the soul’ is a common motif in Christian spiritual writing; and the locus classicus for this motif is the work of John of the Cross, a Spanish Carmelite friar of the sixteenth century. My aim in this paper is to use John’s account of the ”night’ to consider how the themes of mystery, humility and religious practice may be subsumed, and related to one another, within a Christian conception of God and of human life lived out in relation to God

God, pilgrimage, and acknowledgement of place

© 2007 Cambridge University PressThe paper seeks to address three objections to pilgrimage practices – they are tied to superstitious beliefs (except where they are seen as simply an aid to the imagination), imply a crude experiential or emotional understanding of the nature of faith, and rest upon a primitive conception of divine localizability. In responding to these objections, I argue that the religious significance of places is not reducible to their contribution to religious imagination, experience or understanding. In this sense, relationship to God is not just a matter of thought, but of location

A response to Cordry on design

© 2006 Cambridge University PressIn his paper ‘Theism and the philosophy of nature’, Ben Cordry argues that theism's conception of nature has been falsified. In this response, I argue that the universe in many ways conforms to theistic expectations, and that there is no presumption that a divinely ordered world will take the form that Cordry proposes

Representing the gods: the role of art and feeling

© 2000 Cambridge University PressThis paper argues that we can fruitfully consider some central issues in philosophy of religion through the lens provided by the literature in aesthetics. Specifically, I argue that Mikel Dufrenne’s theory of representation in the arts can be usefully applied to representations of the sacred. The paper seeks to trace some of the implications of this view for our understanding of religious language and the epistemology of religious belief. It also aims to throw light on the religious power of art, including art which lacks any explicitly religious content

Staff Development: A Challenge of Privatization

Privatization is a major trend in social welfare, and it is placing new emphasis on staff development in both public and private agencies. By permitting services that are often considered public to be provided under contract with non-profit and for-profit agencies, public policymakers have sought to increase the efficiency of social welfare programs. This has produced greater competition in the welfare marketplace. In a competitive environment, staff development is a key element that enables agencies to respond quickly to market demands for new or imaginative services. The purpose of this article is to describe an innovative staff training program and to report on its long-term impact. In addition, the authors review selected research on staff development and discuss principles that underpin effective staff development programs