Santa Clara University

Tennant C. Wright, S.J.

Senior Lecturer

Fr. Wright was born in Los Angeles, California. He earned a B.A. from Loyola University in Los Angeles (now part of Loyola Marymount University) in 1949 and joined the Jesuit order the following year in Los Gatos, California. After completing an M.A. in English and Philosophy at Gonzaga University in Spokane, Washington (1956), he returned to the Bay Area, where he was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in 1962 and completed an S.T.L. in Theology at Alma College the following year. Further studies followed at the University of Chicago Divinity School (1967-1968) and as a student of Zen Buddhism in Japan and Korea (1973, 1977).

Fr. Wright first taught at Santa Clara University in the English Department from 1956-1959. He returned to join the faculty of Religious Studies from 1964-1967, and permanently from 1969 to the present. From 1969, he has split his time between Belize and the United States, spending the summer and occasional Falls in Belize doing pastoral work and teaching at St. John's Jesuit Junior College, and the remainder of the year at Santa Clara teaching courses on meditation, Zen Buddhism, and Catholic themes in the arts and the media.

Courses

Courses taught at Santa Clara University

	TESP 3	Religious Reflection
	TESP 53	Religious Imagination
	TESP 54	Meditation
	TESP 55	The Catholic Novel
	TESP 144	Theology and the Law
	TESP 148	Literature and Theology
	TESP 153	Catholic Themes in Literature
	TESP 154	Theology in the Daily News
	TESP 169	Jesuit Perspectives

Academic Appointments

Senior Lecturer, Religious Studies Department, Santa Clara University	XX-present
Lecturer, Religious Studies Department, Santa Clara University	1964-1967, 1969-XX
Instructor, Religious Studies/Theology, St. John's Jesuit Junior College, Belize City, Belize	Falls, 1997-present
Instructor, English, Xiamen, People's Republic of China	1990-1991
Lecturer, English Department, Santa Clara University	1956-1959

Research

Research Interests

• Zen Buddhism
• Relation of the Catholic Church with communism in Nicaragua and Cuba
• Catholic themes in literature

Activities

Activities

Working July to December in Belize, Central America, at St. John’s Jesuit College, and at the youth facility for the Belize prison.

Pastoral work in Belize City, Belize (Summer-Fall, 1969-present).