Ian Church, associate professor of philosophy at Hillsdale College, has received a $2.5 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation for a project on “The Virtues and Vices of Spiritual Yearning”.
Professor Church will be collaborating with Daryl R. Van Tongeren (psychology, Hope College) on the grant, which will fund eight sub-grants: four in philosophy and four in psychology.
Here’s a description of the project provided by Professor Church:
It seems like there is a tragedy at the heart of the human experience. On the one hand, spiritual fulfillment seems like an integral part of human flourishing—being spiritually unfulfilled seems to correlate with disorders like anxiety and depression. On the other hand, however, we might worry that spiritual fulfillment dampens one’s spiritual curiosity and will correlate with a host of intellectual vices like closed-mindedness, intellectual arrogance, and more. We might worry that human flourishing, then, requires us to be always yearning for the spiritual but never fully fulfilled.
The aim of this project is to explore the empirical and theoretical contours of the virtues and vices of spiritual yearning by carrying out 2 project sets and administering a funding initiative (8 sub-grants; 4 philosophical, 4 psychological). Key questions include: What does virtuous spiritual yearning look like? Does spiritual satisfaction lead to intellectual vice (lack of curiosity, etc.)? Does spiritual unfulfillment lead to poor mental health outcomes? How does spiritual yearning relate to concepts like existential meaning or epistemic angst? What is the epistemic value of spiritual yearning? And does yearning open people up to intellectual vulnerabilities (e.g. gullibility to charismatic leaders or misinformation in the pursuit of truth)?
The proposed funding initiative will provide crucial support for advancing both the theoretical understanding of spiritual yearning and its connection to emerging empirical research, creating a comprehensive framework to explore how it can be measured, cultivated, and its role in human flourishing. The central outputs for this project will include 2 major funding initiatives (1 theoretical and 1 empirical), at least 25 scholarly articles fit for publication, at least 24 conference presentations, 2 major conferences (launch & capstone), 2 popular-level articles, and an open access special issue of a scholarly journal.
Those interested may learn about applying for the subgrants here.
