Fostering Spiritual Diversity
April is a month filled with big religious holidays. Members of our campus community have celebrated Passover, Buddha’s Birthday, Easter Sunday, and Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), to name but a few. Later this week, Muslim members of our community will bring Ramadan to a close with Eid al-Fitr, a tremendous celebratory feast that marks the end of a month of fasting. These holidays remind us that Lynchburg is a much more religiously and spiritually diverse place than we might realize. These observances also invite us to explore the significance of that diversity on our campus.
In a Courageous Conversation held last month, student leaders, faculty, and staff members gathered to share our stories of spiritual diversity on campus. We noted that our spiritual lives are a key part of our identity and shape our plans for the future. We also realized that the Spiritual Life staff has done a great job of creating supportive and welcoming spaces for so many of us. At the same time, we discovered that it is hard to talk about religion or to share our spiritual identities outside of those spaces. We are afraid that we will offend and anger others if we talk about it in the caf. We are afraid that our peers in the residence halls will judge us. We are afraid that if it comes up in the classroom, we will be the victims of discrimination or a complaint might be filed against us. In short, there are some real barriers to fostering spiritual diversity and interfaith cooperation.
Even so, we know that we want and need to overcome those barriers. Eboo Patel, a sociologist of religion who works to create interfaith awareness and cooperation on college campuses, reports that even though “70 percent of college students said that they believed bridging religious divides was important … fewer than 15 percent participated in any kind of interfaith dialogue.”
The good news is that we can change that. Earlier this year, the Office of Equity and Inclusion, the Spiritual Life Center, and the Religious Studies department began an initiative called “Spiritual Practices in Lynchburg: An Experiential Journey.” Thanks to funding from the Council of Independent Colleges, we are working to create meaningful experiences of religious diversity inside and outside of the classroom. Please consider being part of that journey! For more information, you can reach out to one of us in Religious Studies, in Spiritual Life, or in the Office of Equity and Inclusion. While you’re at it, join us next Monday for the Shumate lecture with Dr. Brahmachari Sharan, the Hindu spiritual advisor at Georgetown University. He will be speaking about “The Spirituality of Difference” at 7 p.m. in the Snidow Chapel. I hope to see you there!