| Dialogue Between Jesuit and Gülen Educational & Spiritual Foundations | |
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This paper examines and compares the spiritual roots of the 450-year old Jesuit Education tradition and the Gülen educational tradition, which has emerged in Turkey and spread throughout the world in the last three decades. It hopes to elicit a fruitful, ongoing dialogue between the two traditions. It focuses on the spiritual vision embodied in each tradition and then how this vision plays out within these two vibrant, energetic educational traditions. It argues that educational traditions, especially educational fads, come and go. What gives a tradition lasting force and transformational power is its ability to embody a spiritual vision within a network of cultures and people who eventually share this vision and who then engender a social capital and religious energy which carries the movement forward. The paper will focus on five central, spiritual elements of Jesuit spirituality, which were first articulated by St. Ignatius of Loyola, and which were subsequently institutionalized in Jesuit education over the next 50 years. The Jesuits were also able to translate a “Catholic sacramental vision” into practical, secular terms which were accessible to almost everyone – from Brahmins in India to mandarins in China to native peoples in America. The Gülen movement seems to have captured a similar vision, perhaps even more global, more international, and more intercultural. Its founder F. Gülen drew on spiritual principles from Sufi Islam to build a foundation for the transformation of society, for a more benign, more humanistic set of relationships among all peoples, and for fostering an ongoing, creative dialogue among all peoples. This is not the first time that scholars have drawn comparisons between Gülen and Jesuit traditions. [1] This paper, however, will probe more deeply into the spiritual vision which each tradition embodies with less emphasis on the actual outcomes of the two movements. ________________________________________ [1] Michael David Graskemper, “A Bridge to Inter-religious Cooperation: The Gülen-Jesuit Educational Nexus,” http://gulenconference.net/files/London. Fr. Patrick Howell has been Vice President for Mission and Ministry at Seattle University since 2007. Prior to that, he was dean of the School of Theology and Ministry (STM), 2000-2006. In that role, he was instrumental in including 12 Protestant denominations in ecumenical partnership and in sponsoring multiple, interfaith dialogue symposia. Since 1985, he has taught pastoral theology, pastoral leadership, sacramental theology, the history of priesthood, the Sacraments of Healing, discernment and decision-making, Jesuit spirituality, and psycho-spiritual development. Fr. Howell’s publications Reducing the Storm to a Whisper: the Story of a Breakdown (Thomas More Press, 1985; new edition Ulyssian Press, 2000) and A Spiritguide during Times of Darkness (Sheed & Ward, 1996). After advanced studies in Boston and Rome, he earned a Doctorate in Ministry from the Catholic University of America in 1985. He is a member of the Catholic Theological Society of America and the international group of Jesuits in Ecumenism. Last year he visited Turkey with an interfaith group from Seattle, sponsored by the Acacia Foundation. |