Dear Spiritual Transformation Friends and Colleagues,

On behalf of the advisory committee, the directors, and the staff of the Metanexus Institute on Religion and Science, I want to welcome you to this webpage filled with information and links about our conference on the scientific investigation of spiritual transformation held October 5-7, 2002 at the Inn at Penn in Philadelphia, PA. Detailed information can be found by clicking on the menu items in the red menu bar at the top of the page.

This workshop was designed to help you develop and perfect your research proposals and for all of us to enhance the quality of our scholarship. We hope to achieve a kind of interdisciplinary critical mass that will shed new light on this enduring and profound human phenomenon. To accomplish this goal, we brought together diverse and distinguished speakers and investigators. The sixty participating investigators at the conference were chosen from a pool of over 470 applicants representing the leading research institutions from all over the world. We also assembled a leading group of experts from science and religion to challenge us from many important directions and disciplines in order to further our insights and understandings. These included speakers and consultants from our advisory board and beyond. We invited a number of outstanding scholars, advisors, and officers of the John Templeton Foundation, who joined with us to enhance these important discussions throughout the weekend. We were also supported by a wonderful team from the Metanexus Institute, who worked diligently and with good cheer on our behalf.

Together we attempted to explore concepts, answer key questions about the methods used to investigate spiritual phenomena, make new connections among various investigators and groups, and establish the groundwork for a more coherent field of study. This webpage, as it is updated, will seek to further these goals, providing information and resources from the conference and beyond. Please take a look around and let us know what resources we can provide to assist your research.

We welcome any visitors who found our site through the WHYY broadcast on the topic of spiritual transformation. The Voices in the Family program, hosted by Dan Gottlieb, PhD. was recorded during the closing ceremonies of the conference and can be found archived at www.whyy.org/91FM/Voices.html.

Finally, I want to acknowledge the enormous help and leadership of the John Templeton Foundation in providing the funds necessary to support significant field formation in the scientific study of religious and spiritual phenomena. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the specific contributions of Arthur Schwartz, program officer, and Pamela Thompson, director of communications, at the Foundation, for their strategic and critical support throughout this process. And last, but by no means least, I want to thank Sir John Templeton, for his vision and generosity in conceiving of and providing funding for this unique program.

Sincerely,

Solomon Katz, Ph.D.
President, Metanexus Institute
Principal Investigator, Spiritual Transformation Scientific Research Program