Toward a community‐oriented action research framework for spirituality: Community psychological and theological perspectives

Spirituality, once an old and honorable religious term for the “exploration into what is involved in becoming human” (McFague, 1997, p. 10), is ubiquitous in contemporary culture, albeit highly diverse and ambiguous in its usage. In our active interchange involving two community psychologists and a theologian—carried on in the spirit of Lewinian action research and pastoral theology's method of congregational studies— we have returned to that earlier tradition. We are developing a framework for spirituality encompassing human development and community development as two sides of the same coin. The framework provides a community‐oriented theoretical account of the dynamics of spirituality and a foundation for action research on the interrelationship of spirituality and community. We begin by describing the context for the development of the framework—the St. Robert project, a participant–observer action research and consultation project ongoing for more than ten years in a Roman Catholic parish. We then present the framework's elements and conclude by outlining an ongoing empirical inquiry at St. Robert into the nature of spirituality, which has implications for the field's address to the spiritual dimensions of personal and community experience, especially psychological sense of community.