Grant Awardees

The Virtues and Vices of Spiritual Yearning initiative asks how the human longing for meaning, connection, transcendence, or a reality greater than oneself can contribute to wisdom, openness, moral growth, and well-being - and how it can instead become entangled with anxiety, dogmatism, credulity, tribalism, or despair. The question is especially pressing as traditional patterns of religious affiliation shift while spiritual seeking continues in both religious and nonreligious forms.

The eight funded sub-grants form a deliberately balanced portfolio. Four philosophical projects develop conceptual and normative frameworks for understanding spiritual yearning and its characteristic virtues and vices. Four psychological projects use cross-cultural, longitudinal, behavioral, experimental, and mixed methods to examine how yearning develops, what shapes it, and how it relates to flourishing and vulnerability. Together, these projects will build a shared interdisciplinary foundation for future scholarship and for practical engagement by clinicians, chaplains, educators, faith leaders, and the wider public.