The jesuit difference (?): Narratives of negotiating spiritual values and secular practices

We detail the experiences of a department of six faculty members in negotiating spirituality in a Jesuit, Catholic University. Grounding our work in “co-constructed narrative” as a method, we utilize narratives gathered through self-reflection, conversation, and interviews to elucidate how contradictory conditions are created through competing discourses of spiritual values and secular practices. These competing discourses create tensions of (a) embracing/resisting, (b) inclusion/exclusion, and (c) proclamation/silence. Faculty narratives revealed the ways they frame and negotiate these tensions in their attempts to construct their identities in relation to the organization and its values. Dialogic theory (Bahktin, 198119861993) is utilized to interpret faculty narratives as well as offer new directions for organizational communication theorizing.