Immigration, spirituality and the arts

Project title:

Immigration, spirituality and the arts

“This project will employee ethnographic methods – including in-depth, interviews and participant observation – to explore the links between social action, spirituality and the arts.”

Researcher:

Project proposal:

This project will explore the links between immigration, spirituality and the arts. While theologians have identified links between social justice and spirituality, and between ethics and the arts, there has been almost no reflection on these links in relation to lived social action—and specifically in relation to contemporary ethical-pastoral responses to migration.  

This project will employ ethnographic methods—including in-depth interviews and participant observation—to explore whether the links between social action, spirituality and the arts identified by theologians are present in the experience of people responding to immigration today. Churches, faith-based organizations and community arts organizations engaged in responding to migrants and refugees will be key partners.   

The findings of Immigration, spirituality and the arts will generate ideas about how to motivate people to act compassionately, and how to sustain this compassionate action in the face of the overwhelming need presented by the current European “migration crisis”.  

More broadly, the project hopes that exploring the connections between ethical action, spirituality and the arts could help to return desire and longing to the moral life—a crucial element in keeping the struggle for social justice alive.

Photo by RhondaK Native Florida Folk Artist on Unsplash

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