A Pew Foundation report indicates that typical of the exodus of people in their 20s and 30s from Church identification are young persons who seem not to have abandoned their basic beliefs or concern for the spiritual dimension of their lives, but to reflect these in an attitude of search rather than of commitment.   

In response, this research project will focus on unfolding the meaning of faith for the new dimensions and needs of our evolving human awareness, its challenges and opportunities. In this sense the goal is to make ?belief more believable,? both for Professor Taylor?s contemporary ?seeker? and indeed for all the faithful, and thereby to render all of personal and social life more fully human and thereby more theonomous or expressive of the divine.

A set of research teams or task forces will work for a 15 month period, alternating team meetings for planning and critical discussion with four month periods for personal research, reflection, and writing. This gives founded hope that light can be shed on this crucial issue of our day. Thus far two teams have been formed to focus respectively on:

(1) the interior search for meaning, led by John Haughey, S.J. of Woodstock Theological Center at Georgetown University, and

(2) the role of belief in the socio-political order of our global world, led by William Barbieri, Ph.D. (Yale) of the School of Theology and Religious Studies at The Catholic University of America.

The teams will consist of leading religious scholars from across the country and beyond.

The project aims: (a) to identify a new and deeper research focus appropriate for life in our secular age, (b) to build teams for effective exploration of new paths, and (c) to relate the findings to the Church's pastoral heritage and present mission.

This work is being carried forward with the support of the L.&H. Bradley Foundation and the Raskob Foundation.

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