Theological Inquiry : Interview

For this assignment, you are responsible for conducting a formal interview with someone of the Christian faith about the significance of their faith in their lives, and then write a report summarizing the findings of your interview. Your instructor will provide guidance on this process, as needed.

Here are some guidelines for selecting your interviewee:

• The person does not have to be someone you know; if you do not know anyone who fits the criteria, let the instructor know and he can provide assistance in finding an interviewee

• The person can be part of the Marymount community, or not affiliated with Marymount; however, the interviewee cannot be another student in our section of Theological Inquiry

• Although they do not have to be a saint, the interviewee must be someone who identifies as Christian (of any denomination) and for whom their faith plays a significant role in their life

• Apart from religion, the interviewee can be from any age and background

You can use whatever questions you see fit, but the interview must delve deeply into all of the following questions:

• As a Christian, how do you identify yourself, for example in terms of denomination (Catholic, Baptist, non-denominational, etc.)? What does that mean to you? What beliefs and practices define that identity, compared to others?

• What are the main ways you have learned about Jesus? How was your faith passed on to you?

• What role do worship and prayer currently play in your life? Do you go to church, and how often? What do you look for in church worship?

• What role does the Bible play in your life?

• What role does your faith play in your everyday life, like work, friendships, relationships, etc.?

• Do you ever have doubts about your faith, or about aspects of your faith?

Do not hesitate to ask follow up questions or ask your interviewee for more information if you feel they did not provide you with enough.

You are also free to cover other aspects of the person's faith, as well, either by raising your own questions or exploring topics that come up during the interview, and in fact these questions can improve the quality of the interview by exploring the person's faith more deeply and providing a more detailed explanation of the person's faith in your report.

In your written report, you should also include a section of your own analysis of the interview, including answers to the following questions:

• What about the interviewee's faith, as they have described it, attracts, inspires, or interests you?

• What about the interviewee's faith, as they have described it, repels, disturbs, or perplexes you?

Be sure to give detailed, thoughtful answers.

Your report on your interview will serve as the basis of evaluation for the interview. The report should give a clear picture of what was shared during the interview.

Therefore you should make frequent use of direct quotations from the interview, as well as other references to what the interviewee had to say. However, the report should not be a word-for-word transcript of the interview; you should interpret and arrange the material from the interview in a way that makes sense to you.

The report should be 3 to 5 pages, double spaced, in 12-point of a standard font. While you have some flexibility in terms of structure, the report should be well-written (good spelling, grammatically correct, etc.) and have a logical organization (an introduction with a thesis statement, logical paragraph ordering, topic sentences for each paragraph, etc.).