Campus Chaplaincy for a Multifaith World
Rabbi Nancy Fuchs Kreimer, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College
Funded by the Henry Luce Foundation
2017-2019
In November 2016, the Henry Luce Foundation announced that the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College would receive one of the six inaugural grants from the Luce Fund for Theological Education to support an innovative program — Campus Chaplaincy for a Multifaith World.
The program was an outgrowth of RRC’s work in 2013-2016 to create a new model for multifaith encounter: Cultivating Character: A Conversation across Communities. In a series of retreats with veteran and emerging religious leaders, we explored how sharing spiritual practices for the cultivation of character can be a rich entry point for learning about each others traditions and ourselves. Participants told us that this model powerfully supplemented other modes of interfaith encounter: text study, theological dialogue, social action
Campus Chaplaincy for a Multifaith World applied that model to a specific population — campus chaplains and religious advisors. The goal was to increase the capacities of chaplains of many faiths to nurture and deepen their own moral and spiritual lives; to build relationships with one another; and to encourage productive conversations across differences on college campuses.
We learned that the audience for this project included not only campus chaplains and religious advisors but also student life professionals, professors and many others concerned with the spiritual and ethical lives of college students.
We also learned that religious diversity is just the beginning. Students found themselves challenged by fraught encounters across many divides–including race, politics, gender, sexual orientation, and social class. These are years when students encounter more diversity than ever before in their lives, and perhaps ever again. Doubling down on virtues and values, building connections across divides and promoting spiritual practices that can sustain us are needed now more than ever.
Adapted from the project’s About page, here.
Campus Chaplaincy for a Multifaith World