Document Type
Scholarship
Abstract
Many international and domestic immersion programs for faculty and staff at Jesuit colleges and universities in the United States have in common the goal of promoting participants’ solidarity with poor and marginalized populations. These programs often understand solidarity as a pedagogical instrument: direct contact with human suffering provokes a desire to think and act differently in order to redress various forms of social inequity. This essay proposes that immersions can and should also be opportunities for engaging faculty and staff at Jesuit institutions of higher education in conversations about, and even experiences of, social grace. The paper offers an overview and definition of social grace understood theologically as the remedy to social sin, outlines the characteristics of the faculty/staff immersion program that identify it as a site for encountering social grace, and argues for the immersion as a privileged opportunity for forming faculty and staff, including those who do not identify as Catholic or Christian.
Recommended Citation
Sebastian, John T. Ph.D.. "Encountering Grace: A Theological Framework for Faculty and Staff Immersion Programs." Jesuit Higher Education: A Journal Vol. 10: No. 2 (2021) . Available at: https://epublications.regis.edu/jhe/vol10/iss2/7
