Students are settling into campus life at colleges and universities across the country, bringing with them a vast array of spiritual beliefs. Polls show that the majority consider themselves spiritual, pray and believe in a higher power. The challenge for colleges and universities is how to engage that energy and honor those beliefs – considering that what students believe in can range from paganism to Islam to Zoroastrianism to evangelical Christianity.
College chaplains say they’re seeing a resurgence of religious activity and a breadth of religious diversity that reflects the world. Many campuses are responding by trying to make space for all – by transforming chapels into multifaith centers with room for Muslims to spread their prayer rugs and Buddhists to sit in zazen; by opening interfaith residence halls and special dining rooms for students with religiously based dietary restrictions; by creating multifaith councils for students to share their faith experiences and learn from others. Sometimes it’s just providing space for conversation – in the basement of Shove Chapel at Colorado College, students slurp Fair Trade coffee at a coffee shop called Sacred Grounds.
But diversity can be complicated because it leads to questions about the implications of religious pluralism. Is there a difference between coexisting and really talking about religious belief? Does it strengthen or dilute one’s own faith to know more about what others believe? How can schools involve students who stand clear of organized religion but care intensely about spirituality, justice and caring for others? What happens if some groups want to evangelize or hold “truth claims” that contradict the beliefs of others – or which other students find offensive?
What does pluralism really mean?
Jump to:
- Why it matters
- Issues to explore
- Questions for reporters
- National sources
- Resource organizations
- Background
The campuses of colleges and universities reflect the world. International students, the children of immigrants and a generation steeped in terrorism and the Internet bring with them an awareness of world politics, in which religion plays a significant role. Many students are hungry to know more, understand more, about the faith traditions of others. Classes on world religions typically are packed. Aware that the world is ever more international, ever more connected, the students on college campuses today are passionately asking: What do I believe in? And can we all get along?
• Some say that colleges and universities are just starting to pay as much attention at the administrative level to religious diversity as they have to differences in other areas, such as race, class and gender. Some schools are starting to see value in getting people talking publicly about differences in religious views, and are looking for ways to intentionally weave that conversation into the curriculum and into student life. What initiatives are under way?
• Many schools have programs to get students involved in helping others or advocating for justice, and this often can be a place where students from different faith backgrounds, or those from a secular point of view, work side-by-side for a common cause. What connections exist between faith and community service? Does building a Habitat for Humanity house together or pushing for changes in laws get students talking about what they believe and why they want to help?
• On many campuses, multifaith councils have been created to connect the leadership of the various faith groups, and to some extent to hold them accountable for sharing in the school’s overall vision for appreciating religious diversity. What role do multifaith councils play? When tensions pop up among religious groups on campus, how do these councils respond? Read a report, posted by the Pluralism Project, on the 2005 “Coming Together” conference of multifaith councils from more than 30 colleges and universities.
• Sometimes religious friction does heat up among different faith traditions. But some university chaplains report that tensions can also build over differing views within one religion – for example, between liberal and conservative Christians on controversial issues such as abortion or homosexuality, or among Jews regarding U.S. policy toward Israel. What are the greatest sources of religious friction on campuses? And where do different faith groups find common ground or form partnerships?
• Some colleges that have been historically aligned with a particular religious tradition have been revisiting that relationship in light of increasing religious pluralism. In some cases, there have been controversies about whether members of the boards of trustees at colleges based in the Christian tradition must be Christian, whether Bible courses will be required or what kind of chapel services will be held. Read, for example, a July 22, 2006, New York Times story about Baptist colleges cutting their church ties, or an April 13, 2005, story from insidehighered.com about a dispute at Davidson College in North Carolina.
• Other schools intentionally market themselves as evangelical “Christian colleges” – and their enrollment is booming, according to a Religion News Service story published on March 25, 2006, in The Washington Post. Find out what’s happening at religiously affiliated colleges near you – is the historic faith connection being highlighted or downplayed, and why?
• What changes are colleges and universities making in response to religious diversity – what are they doing differently now than five or 10 years ago?
• Are students today more religiously active? What’s the range of expression, both in terms of faith groups and nontraditional spirituality? What’s really hot in campus spiritual life – it seems to be everything from gospel choirs to moon circles.
• Do students talk about faith or spirituality in class? When and how? Do they (or their professors) wish that happened more?
• How do students from different faith traditions share their beliefs or their practices with one another? At some colleges, for example, students from many faith backgrounds join in the Hindu celebration of Diwali, the Festival of Lights, or fast in solidarity with Muslims during Ramadan – and use that as a chance to talk about the significance of light or fasting within their own traditions. What’s happening at schools near you?
• Do some students feel there’s a lack of tolerance on campus – and if so, in what ways? Do religious students feel free to practice their faith? Are some traditions accepted but not others? Who is more accepting – those who practice religion or those who do not?
National sources
• Peter Laurence is executive director of the Education as Transformation program at Wellesley College in Massachusetts. The program works with educational institutions that are considering the impact of religious diversity and the role of spirituality in education. Laurence has said pluralism “assumes the equality of religions, at least as far as deserving a place in the dialogue. It makes no assumptions about the truth of each religion except to affirm that truth is not the exclusive possession of any one tradition.” Contact 854-528-3490, PeterLL@concentric.net.
• Caryn McTighe Musil is a senior vice president for diversity, equity and global issues with the Association of American Colleges and Universities. Contact 202-387-3760, musil@aacu.org.
• Eboo Patel is founder and executive director of Interfaith Youth Core, based in Chicago. This nonprofit organization brings together college students and other young people from different faith traditions to work together on service projects and to build interreligious understanding. Listen to a Nov. 7, 2005, commentary Patel wrote for NPR’s “This I Believe,” in which he says: “I am an American Muslim. I believe in pluralism,” and explains why real understanding among religious groups is vital. Contact 312-573-8941, eboo@ifyc.org.
• Sharon M.K. Kugler is university chaplain at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, where students come from dozens of faith groups; see a graphic showing the religious distribution of current undergraduates. In February 2006, the school’s Campus Ministries and its Interfaith Council sponsored Coming Together 2, the second national conference for college students involved in interfaith work. Contact 410-261-1880, chaplain@jhu.edu.
• Jennifer A. Lindholm is project director for the Spirituality in Higher Education study, a project of the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California Los Angeles. Contact 310-825-1925, jlindhol@ucla.edu.
• The Rev. Paul B. Raushenbush, an American Baptist minister, is associate dean for religious life at Princeton University in Princeton, N.J. He is the author of Teen Spirit: One World, Many Faiths (HCI Teens, 2004) and writes a teen spirituality advice column – “Ask Pastor Paul” – for Beliefnet.com. Read an April 6, 2006, interview in The Daily Princetonian in which Raushenbush describes the impact of religious diversity at Princeton. Contact 609-258-6245, praushen@princeton.edu.
• The Rev. Paul Sorrentino is coordinator for religious life at Amherst College in Amherst, Mass. His doctoral work at Princeton Theological Seminary focused on religious pluralism in the academy and included a survey of Amherst students regarding their views on religious pluralism. While he advises the Christian Fellowship at Amherst, Sorrentino writes that “we respond best to religious plurality by encouraging the full expression of different faiths.” Contact 413-542-8149, pvsorrentino@amherst.edu.
Resource organizations
• The Ford Foundation has provided grants of $100,000 apiece to 27 higher education institutions through the Difficult Dialogues program. This program, created in 2005, supports projects that promote pluralism and academic freedom on college campuses, finding ways for people of diverse backgrounds to discuss “contentious political, religious, racial and cultural issues,” according to the program’s Web site. Another 16 schools got stipends of $10,000 each also allowing them to participate.
• Read a 2006 enewsSource backgrounder on trends in spirituality on college campuses – including the creation of multifaith chapels and the popularity of everything from labyrinths to neopagan study to Taizé worship.
• Read an article from the spring 2005 CrossCurrents magazine in which Dana Graef, a Buddhist involved with the interfaith Religious Life Council at Princeton University, describes how interfaith dialogue takes place there – and what she said when a group of Sikhs, Muslims, Baha’is, Jews and Christians asked her, “How can you pray, if not to God?”
• Read a January 2006 report, published by The Avi Chai Foundation, assessing the experience of Jewish college students. The researchers, Amy L. Sales and Leonard Saxe of the Maurice and Marilyn Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., interviewed more than 700 Jewish students on 20 campuses and surveyed more than 2,000 students. They found both opportunities for students to strengthen their Jewish identity on many campuses and, in some cases, resistance from the students to doing so. Contact Sales, associate director of the Cohen Center, 781-736-2066, sales@brandeis.edu.
• A group of 25 scholars, from the Society for Values in Higher Education, is working on a “declaration” about the role of religion in higher education – addressing such issues as academic freedom and the need for “religious literacy” in a pluralistic world. Read a Jan. 27, 2006, report of that effort from the insidehighered.com Web site.
• The Association of American Colleges and Universities operates Diversity Web, a clearinghouse for issues related to diversity in higher education. Read a Jan. 16, 1998, opinion piece from the Chronicle of Higher Education about why colleges and universities need to pay attention.
• The National Association of College and University Chaplains Inc. is a professional association representing chaplains and others working in religious life on college campuses.
• The Center for Inquiry – On Campus is a nonprofit organization, based in Amherst, N.Y., dedicated to promoting reason rather than religion among students. It tries to network freethinkers, skeptics, secularists and humanists on college and university campuses. Contact D.J. Grothe, director, 716-636-7571, director@campusfreethought.org.
• The Pluralism Project at Harvard University is studying religious diversity across the United States. Contact 617-496-2481, staff@pluralism.org.
• Campus Crusade for Christ and InterVarsity Christian Fellowship are evangelical campus ministries with branches at campuses across the nation.
Background
POLLS
• On April 11, 2006, Harvard University’s Institute of Politics released a poll showing that seven of 10 college students in the U.S. say religion is somewhat important or very important in their lives. Morality played a strong role in their political views, and they see issues ranging from abortion to disaster relief as having moral implications.
• The Spirituality in Higher Education project, based at the Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California Los Angeles, has surveyed the religious attitudes of college students and professors.
• A survey of more than 112,000 freshmen from 236 colleges, conducted in 2004, found high levels of both spiritual interest and involvement. More than two-thirds pray, eight in 10 believe in God, and the report found a “wealth of diversity” in students’ religious beliefs and practices.
• A survey of beliefs of 40,670 faculty members from 421 colleges and universities was released in 2005. It found that most faculty members do consider themselves to be spiritual, but most did not think colleges should be concerned about assisting in students’ spiritual development.
ARTICLES
• Read a Sept. 15, 2006, story from the Chicago Tribune about how one Catholic college – DePaul University, which is opening a new Hillel Center – is trying to reach out to students from religiously diverse backgrounds while also retaining its distinctive Catholic identity.
• Read a Sept. 8, 2003 Washington Times story on the growth of Christian colleges. It’s posted by questia.com.
• Read an Aug. 27, 2006, Washington Post story about Georgetown University banning off-campus Protestant ministries, including InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, from campus activities.
• Read an Aug. 4, 2006, San Francisco Chronicle story about the trend toward churches and campus ministries building dorms on college campuses.
• Read a story from the May/June 2006 issue of Stanford Magazine about religious diversity among Stanford students. The story includes profiles of a Jewish woman who plans to become a rabbi, a Hindu who fasted last year with a Muslim friend during Ramadan, a Catholic student who attends Mass daily, and the grandson of an Iranian cleric who helps to lead weekly prayers.
• Read an April 9, 2006, USA Today story about the first college sorority for Muslim women, Gamma Gamma Chi.
• Read a Web journal from March 2006 posted by Lauren Aczon, a student at Colorado College, who wrote of the unexpected comfort she found in the school’s chapel at the time of her grandmother’s death.
• Read an April 5, 2006, article from The Lariat at Baylor University about an effort to change a policy barring religious groups that aren’t Baptist from meeting on campus.
• Read a March 30, 2006, University of Chicago Chronicle article about the transformation of the basement of a chapel built in 1928 into the Interreligious Center.
• Read an article from the Spring 2005 issue of CrossCurrents in which Christina Wright writes of how her views of Christianity, shaped in small-town Michigan, changed after she went to Northwestern University and got to know people from other religious traditions.
• Read an Oct. 20, 2005, story from the online publication [X]press at San Francisco State University about a Ramadan Fast-A-Thon, in which about 350 non-Muslim students and faculty joined Muslims to fast and raise money for disaster relief. Fast-A-Thons are held at college campuses around the country.
• Read a Nov. 30, 2003, Boston Globe article about the rising profile of Christian evangelical groups at liberal colleges in the Northeast.
• Read a Jan. 11, 2002, story from Religion and Ethics Newsweekly about a kosher-halal dining hall opening at Dartmouth College to meet the dietary needs of Muslim, Jewish and Hindu students.
• Read a Feb. 8, 2002, Chronicle of Higher Education article about how religion is viewed on college campuses and a Nov. 9, 2001, story describing the struggles of Muslim students to fit in at school while remaining devout.
Regional sources
IN THE NORTHEAST
• Robert J. Nash is a professor of education and integrated professional studies at the University of Vermont. He is the author of Spirituality, Ethics, Religion and Teaching: A Professor’s Journey (Peter Lang Publishing, 2002) and Religious Pluralism in the Academy: Opening the Dialogue (Peter Lang Publishing, 2001). Read an opinion piece he wrote for The Vermont Connection about why he thinks it’s important for colleges to encourage discussion of students’ diverse religious views. Contact 802-656-2030, rnash@zoo.uvm.edu.
• Pelonomi Khumoetsile-Taylor is director of diversity and inclusion at Bunker Hill Community College in Boston, where students come from more than 60 countries. The college sponsors a “Day of Dialogue” twice a year and publishes a journal to help faculty and staff think creatively about diversity relating to such factors as age, race, country of origin and religion. Read, for example, the article “Bagels, Sushi, Fufu and Flan: The Diversity Project and Recipes for Change.” Contact 617-228-3311, diversity@bhcc.mass.edu.
• David W. Machacek is a resident fellow at the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. He has studied religious pluralism and works with the Religious Pluralism in Southern California Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara, which brings scholars from other countries to study how people of diverse faiths can coexist in the U.S. Contact 860-297-4233, David.Machacek@trincoll.edu.
• Melissa Camba is assistant director of student life for multicultural programs at Wheaton College in Norton, Mass. For three years, ending in December 2004, Wheaton received a Hewlett Foundation “Pluralism and Unity” grant totaling $150,000 to offer courses and work with the community to teach understanding of diversity and multiculturalism. Contact 508-286-3456, Camba_Melissa@wheatoncollege.edu.
IN THE EAST
• D. Michael Lindsay is a sociologist at Princeton University in Princeton, N.J., who has studied the increasing prominence of evangelicalism in the United States, including on college campuses. Contact 609-258-8014, mlindsay@princeton.edu.
• Muqtedar Khan is an assistant professor in the department of political science and international relations at the University of Delaware. He has written about how American Muslims are negotiating a sense of identity and acceptance in a pluralistic country – see a chapter he wrote for Taking Religious Pluralism Seriously: Spiritual Politics on America’s Sacred Ground (Baylor University Press, 2005). Contact 302-831-1939 or 302-384-1795, mkhan@udel.edu.
• Joe Eldridge is university chaplain at American University in Washington, D.C. The University’s Kay Spiritual Life Center is an interfaith house of worship, and its chaplains have written that “we are Baha’i, Buddhist, Catholic, Jewish, Hindu, Latter-day Saints, Muslim, various strands of Protestant and Unitarian,” representing some of the religious diversity of the school. Contact 202-885-3320, eldridg@american.edu.
IN THE SOUTHEAST
• Robert M. O’Neil, a former president of the University of Virginia and a law professor who teaches about church-state issues, is director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression, a nonprofit organization in Charlottesville, Va. The center is working with the Ford Foundation’s Difficult Dialogues program, which helps colleges and universities with diverse populations learn to have constructive dialogue about contentious issues. Contact 434-295-4784, rmo@virginia.edu.
• Stan Dotson is dean of LifeWorks, a civic leadership development program at Mars Hill College in Mars Hill, N.C. In 2004-05, a LifeWorks theme was “Everybody Get Together,” an effort to get students discussing tension surrounding religion, sexual orientation and race. Contact 828-689-1161, sdotson@mhc.edu.
• Gary M. Laderman is a religious historian and an associate professor of religion at Emory University in Atlanta. Read an April 26, 2002, interview with Religion & Ethics Newsweekly in which Laderman discusses the “unprecedented” level of religious pluralism in the U.S. today and the implications of that for the public arena. Contact 404-727-4641, gladerm@emory.edu.
IN THE SOUTH
• Marilyn J. Kurata is director of core curriculum enhancement and an associate professor of English at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is working with a program, supported by the Ford Foundation, to integrate into the curriculum a focus on race, ethnicity, religious values and place to give students a better understanding of ethics and civic responsibility. Contact 205-934-0513, mkurata@uab.edu.
• Cindy Brown is an associate professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg. Working with the Pluralism Project at Harvard University, Brown has used photography to document religious diversity in Southern Mississippi; view images from her photo essay. Contact 601-266-4260, cindy.brown@usm.edu.
• The Rev. J. Wayne Clark is chaplain and director of religious life at Hendrix College in Conway, Ark. He also is president of the National Association of College and University Chaplains. Contact 501-540-1263, clark@hendrix.edu.
IN THE MIDWEST
• John Schmalzbauer is an associate professor of religious studies at Missouri State University in Springfield. He is working on a book about the resurgence of religion on college campuses. He also is co-investigator for the ongoing National Study of Campus Ministries. Contact 417-836-5918, Jschmazlbauer@MissouriState.edu.
• Betty A. DeBerg is a religion professor and head of the department of philosophy and religion at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls. She is a co-author of Religion on Campus (University of North Carolina Press, 2003) and is co-director of the National Campus Ministry Project. Contact 319-273-6223, betty.deberg@uni.edu.
• Steve Hays is an associate professor in the department of classics and world religions at Ohio University in Athens. With funding from the Ford Foundation, he is helping to develop a Difficult Dialogues Concerning Race and Religion program. Starting in fall 2007, as many as 200 incoming students will attend a three-day camp to learn how to talk constructively with people of different backgrounds. Contact 740-597-2105, hays@ohio.edu.
• The Rev. Timothy S. Stevens, a United Church of Christ minister, is university chaplain at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. Northwestern offers an Interfaith Living and Learning Community – an interfaith dorm – so students of different religious backgrounds can live together in intentional community. Contact 847-491-7256, chaplain@northwestern.edu.
• The Interfaith Campus Coalition at the University of Minnesota includes clergy and students and encourages dialogue and respect among religious traditions. It posts a page on resisting pressure from religious groups, along with links to participating campus ministries and their contact information.
IN THE SOUTHWEST
• Elaine Howard Ecklund is a postdoctoral fellow in the sociology department at Rice University in Houston. She has a grant from the John Templeton Foundation to study the religious views of scientists at universities – surveying more than 1,600 scientists at 21 universities, and finding that spirituality is important to many of them. (Read a Nov. 2, 2005, account of that research from Science & Theology News.) She also is the author of the forthcoming book Korean American Evangelicalism: New Models for Civic Life (Oxford University Press). Contact ehe@rice.edu (prefers email).
• Linell Cady is a professor of religious studies and director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Conflict at Arizona State University in Tempe. The center, founded in 2003, studies the conflict created when diverse religious traditions and the secular world collide. Contact 480-965-2164, Linell.Cady@asu.edu.
• Bruce Coriell is the chaplain at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. A 2005 issue of the alternative student magazine CiPher explored faith on campus, from Scientology to the construction of a labyrinth to “spiritual but not religious” students. Contact 719-389-6638, bcoriell@coloradocollege.edu.
• Michael Beaty is a philosophy professor and vice provost for faculty development at Baylor University in Waco, Texas. He has done research on what it means to be a Christian university – what it means for an institution to be both religious in character and academic. Contact 254-710-3368, Michael_beaty@baylor.edu.
IN THE WEST/NORTHWEST
• Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann is senior associate dean of religious life at Stanford University in Stanford, Calif. Read an April 1, 2003, story from The Stanford Daily about the breadth of religious expression at the university. Contact 650-725-0010, rabbipkn@stanford.edu.
• Christopher Soper is a political scientist and director of the Center for Faith and Learning at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif. According to its Web site, the center “seeks to unite what many in the academy would separate: the life of the faith and the life of the mind,” by encouraging professors to consider how their personal faith can be integrated into their teaching and scholarship. Contact 310-506-4792, csoper@pepperdine.edu.
• Barbara A. McGraw is a professor of business administration at St. Mary’s College of California, in Moraga. She is the co-editor of Taking Religious Pluralism Seriously: Spiritual Politics on America’s Sacred Ground (Baylor University Press, 2005), in which she argues that the freedom of conscience honored by the nation’s founders can be the “sacred ground” needed in a religiously pluralistic country. Contact 925-631-4061, bmcgraw@stmarys-ca.edu.
