Strategy for a Military Spiritual Self-Development Tool

At the U.S. Army's Command and General Staff College (CGSC), students are charged with balancing their lives in mind, body, and spirit; however, self-development tools are readily available to U. S. military leaders in the first two of these realms, but not in the third realm of the spirit. Also, political scientist Samuel Huntington commented in his essay, "The Clash of Civilizations?" that future conflicts will arise among cultures which are most clearly delineated by religious differences; therefore, military officers must understand faith differences around the world in order to prevent and respond to future conflicts. Because the human spirit is often, though not always, tended to through religion, these requirements are inherently linked. Military leaders would benefit by having a practical tool to aid the self-development of their spirit and their religious cultural awareness. This thesis presents a strategy to guide development of a military-specific spiritual self-assessment and religious cultural awareness measure in order to rectify the military's current dearth of such resources. The goal of this tool is to offer the service member a simple way to quickly understand their own spirit in light of how people of other religions see themselves and how they might see the service member.