{"id":1671,"date":"2023-04-20T11:14:37","date_gmt":"2023-04-20T15:14:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redchairblogs.wpengine.com\/holymoly\/?p=1671"},"modified":"2023-04-20T11:14:37","modified_gmt":"2023-04-20T15:14:37","slug":"fostering-spiritual-diversity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/2023\/04\/20\/fostering-spiritual-diversity\/","title":{"rendered":"Fostering Spiritual Diversity"},"content":{"rendered":"

April is a month filled with big religious holidays.\u00a0 Members of our campus community have celebrated Passover, Buddha\u2019s Birthday, Easter Sunday, and Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), to name but a few.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 These holidays remind us that Lynchburg is a much more religiously and spiritually diverse place than we might realize.\u00a0 These observances also invite us to explore the significance of that diversity on our campus.<\/span><\/p>\n

In a<\/span> Courageous Conversation <\/span><\/i>held last month, student leaders, faculty, and staff members gathered to share our stories of spiritual diversity on campus.\u00a0 We noted that our spiritual lives are a key part of our identity and shape our plans for the future.\u00a0 We also realized that the Spiritual Life staff has done a great job of creating supportive and welcoming spaces for so many of us.\u00a0 At the same time, we discovered that it is hard to talk about religion or to share our spiritual identities outside of those spaces.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 In short, there are some real barriers to fostering spiritual diversity and interfaith cooperation.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Even so, we know that we want and need to overcome those barriers.\u00a0 Eboo Patel, a sociologist of religion who works to create interfaith awareness and cooperation on college campuses, reports that even though \u201c70 percent of college students said that they believed bridging religious divides was important \u2026 fewer than 15 percent participated in any kind of interfaith dialogue.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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 \u201cSpiritual Practices in Lynchburg: An Experiential Journey.\u201d\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Please consider being part of that journey!\u00a0 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.\u00a0 While you\u2019re at it, join us next Monday for the Shumate lecture with <\/span>Dr. Brahmachari Sharan, the Hindu spiritual advisor at Georgetown University.\u00a0 He will be speaking about \u201cThe Spirituality of Difference\u201d at <\/span>7 p.m. in the Snidow Chapel. I hope to see you there!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

April is a month filled with big religious holidays.\u00a0 Members of our campus community have celebrated Passover, Buddha\u2019s Birthday, Easter Sunday, and Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), to name but a few.\u00a0 Later this week, Muslim members of our community …<\/p>\n

Fostering Spiritual Diversity<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1QIf6-qX","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1671"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1671\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.lynchburg.edu\/holymoly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}