The Quest for Meaning and Wholeness: Spiritual and Religious Connections in the Lives of College Faculty by Jennifer A. Lindholm (review)

Jennifer Lindholm’s provocative title comes from her administration of the 2012 Faculty Belief and Values Survey (FBVS). The survey, completed by more than 9,000 faculty members at over 250 institutions, investigated faculty attitudes towards spirituality and religion and, importantly, how these reflect the values they hold about their work in higher education.

The Faculty Belief and Values Survey follows a significant pedigree of previous studies stemming from Lindholm’s collaboration with Alexander Astin and Denise Astin on the Spirituality in Higher Education Project. Their previous surveys include a set of items on the Triennial National Survey of College Faculty in 2004 (sponsored by the Higher Education Research Institute) and the College Student’s Belief and Values Survey (CSBV) in 2004 and 2007.

The Faculty Belief and Values Survey stems from this collaboration, which developed the definitions used for measuring spirituality and religion on the CSVB as well as the survey items that might reveal the behaviors that college students associate with them. The processes and findings of the CSBV appear in Cultivating the Spirit: How College Can Enhance Student’s Inner Lives (Jossey-Bass, 2011). This volume is referenced frequently in Lindholm’s current work. Those looking for more information on Lindholm’s guiding vision and previous conclusions will want to have Cultivating the Spirit at hand.

Lindholm’s current book is divided into seven chapters that describe the empirical results of the Faculty Belief and Values Survey. Included also are a brief foreword, preface, and epilogue, each adding a glimpse into Lindholm’s own views about the role of spirituality in education. The first chapter describes the relationship of this survey to the prior studies of the Spirituality in Higher Education Project and provides background about the central operational definitions used to develop the test’s measures and items.

The second chapter gives a general picture of the spiritual and religious attitudes of faculty across a variety of characteristics including age, race, gender, as well as institutional and political affiliations. The remaining four chapters describe the results of the survey items with three dedicated to the spirituality measures and one to the religious.

Following the protocol of the Spirituality and Higher Education Project, Lindholm distinguishes spirituality from religion. The former concerns a “multifaceted” attempt to answer life’s “big questions,” while the latter refers to behavioral or intellectual reactions to organized religion. The two have been separated to acknowledge that respondents may not necessarily associate religious beliefs and values with spiritual ones. Whether or not one agrees, noting this distinction is critically important to an informed reading of the book. Given their popular usage, it is easy to slip into reading these two terms as synonyms and thereby misconstrue Lindholm’s explanation of the data.

Nine measures make up the survey and, of those, five focus on spirituality. “Spiritual quest” considers the importance of seeking meaning in life, of valuing beauty, and of becoming a loving person who possesses inner harmony. The “ethic of caring” inquires about the respondent’s concern for others, the desire to provide assistance to those in need, and a commitment to social justice.

“Ecumenical worldview” measures the degree to which one views the world as interconnected and as calling for acceptance of others. The fourth measure, “charitable involvement,” queries participation in service activities and or other “helping behaviors” to friends or charities, including making monetary donations. Fifth, “equanimity” concerns one’s experience of “a dynamic state of internal equilibrium, or mental and emotional balance” with an internal “sense of calmness and peace” and an outward “sense of poise” (p. 158).

The remaining four measures focus on participation in a religious faith tradition. The internal measure on “religious commitment” asks faculty the degree to which they seek to follow religious beliefs and feel those beliefs to be central to their identity. The “religious...