Members of USC’s Interfaith Council from left: Riaz Dini, Charu Gupta, Andrew Shepherd and Onder Oor Photographs by Joe Pugliese

Issue: Summer 2004

Leap of Faiths

When USC replaced its chaplain with a dean of religious life, a spiritual and ethical current flowed into students’ academic and social lives. A new era of religious pluralism was born.

By Diane Krieger

Thirteen students enter slowly, single-file, heads bowed, reciting in unison their respective creeds. Out of sync but mysteriously in harmony, the words form a serene babble (or should that be Babel?).

“O Lord! Unto Thee I repair for refuge…”

“Our Father who art in heaven…”

“Aum bhoor bhuwah swaha, tat savitur varenyam, bhargo devasaya dheemahi, dhiyo yo nah prachodayat.”

“There is no life, truth, intelligence nor substance in matter. All is infinite mind and is infinite manifestation.”

“Sh’ma Yisrael Adonai eloheinu…”

“An it harm none, do as you will…”

“Allahu akbar, Allahu akbar.… ”

They stop and face the congregation. One at a time, each student steps forward and declares his or her faith:

“I am a Bahá’í,” says Riaz Dini.

“I am a Christian,” says Azure Williams.

“I am a Buddhist,” says Darryl Ng.

“I am a Muslim,” says Noor Kazmi.

“I am an Atheist,” says Fong Chih.

“I am a Roman Catholic,” says Junelle Mallari.

“I am a Christian Scientist,” says Andrew Shepherd.

“I am a Hindu,” says Charu Gupta.

“I am Jewish,” says Sander Granat. And so on.

The litany sets the tone for an interfaith evening, the kick-off event in USC’s Religion on Campus Week. “You may not want to say ‘amen’ to everything you hear tonight,” event coordinator Brigid McManama, a non-practicing Catholic student, tells the ecumenical crowd of worshippers. “That’s OK. We just want you to be true to your faith and keep an open mind.”

The 90-minute service that follows is a whirlwind tour of world religions. One minute the gospel choir Saved by Grace is rocking the Davidson Conference Center with “Glory to God.” The next, a young woman who identifies herself as “a pagan and a Wiccan” is calling on the four elements to “bless this space.” A Quaker student leads the assembly in silent worship, then starts a “hand chain.” Ankle bells and bangles churning, a silk-garbed dancer interprets the nine emotions of humanity as invocation to Brahma. A Jewish student chants the Hashkiveinu, calling down God’s shelter of peace. In dramatic monologue, a Christian leader conjures an eye-witness account of how Jesus turned water into wine. A young man faces east and intones the Adhan, or Muslim call to prayer. A Buddhist monk pounds ecstatically on the Dharma drum.

This spiritual potpourri is a microcosm of religious life at USC today. It could also pass for a textbook definition of “religious pluralism.”

If you’ve never encountered the term before, think of it as the metaphysical counterpart to multiculturalism: a live-and-let-live, variety-is-the-spice-of-life take on the divine.

“This is a new way of looking at things,” explains USC Bahá’í religious director Randy Dobbs. “Each faith used to think it had exclusive rights to the truth. Now many of us accept that everyone is ‘right’ in the spiritual sense. Every faith is valid; all have value.”

That may not sound particularly radical in a nation founded on the Enlightenment principles of 18th-century deists and free-thinkers. But it’s only in recent decades that Americans – and more specifically, American college students – have been in a position to actually practice what the Marquis de Lafayette and Thomas Jefferson preached.

Two hundred years ago, our universities were mostly Protestant institutions in an overwhelmingly Protestant land. Catholics, Jews and secularists have gained a certain foothold in American life over the past 150 years, but it was only with the lifting of immigration bans and quotas in the

1950s and ’60s that non-Western religions made headway in this hemisphere. Between 1990 and 1999 alone, the Asian population grew 43 percent nationwide to 11 million. According to demographers, far more Americans today are Hindus and Buddhists (about 500,000 each) than Quakers or Unitarians. And there are about as many American Muslims as American Jews (5 to 7 million), well ahead of Presbyterians and Episcopalians (2 million each).

Susan Laemmle is something of a celebrity among university-based religious professionals. “They recognize that Susan is doing something special, that she is a pioneer,” says law and religion professor Ronald Garet.

Few colleges have done much to accommodate what Harvard religion scholar Diana Eck calls this “new geo-religious reality.” On a recent visit to Yale University, USC dean of religious life Susan Laemmle found that speaking roles at this world-class university’s freshman baccalaureate service are always taken by the same three faiths: Protestant, Catholic and Jewish.

“That doesn’t make any sense!” says Laemmle, who brought Colby College religion scholar Nikky Singh, an authority on Sikhism, to speak at USC’s 2003 baccalaureate.

At first blush, you wouldn’t expect USC to be a trailblazer in this arena. Like most private universities, its early history was church-affiliated. But even in 1880, Troy’s inclusive character was tacitly clear: its three founders – a Protestant, a Catholic and a Jew – had written into the charter that admission was to be open to all races and all faiths.

By 1928 – the year USC formally severed ties with the Methodist Church – Catholics and Jews already made up 15 percent of the student body. In 2004, Methodists and other mainline Protestants make up less than 20 percent of Trojan undergraduates.

None of this is really surprising given the demographics of Los Angeles, which has to be the most spiritually diverse city on the face of the planet. In 1999, USC religion professor emeritus John Orr counted 600 individual faiths actively practiced in the Southland. While the region is heavily Catholic (40 percent in 2000), who knew this was a major center of Buddhism? With more than 300 temples, Los Angeles is home to the world’s greatest Buddhist diversity – from Koreans and Vietnamese to Sri Lankans and Anglo-Americans.

Professor of religion Don Miller, whose department’s general education courses are regularly filled to overflowing with non-religion majors. “This is a trend all over the country,” he says. “Religion departments are well-enrolled.”

One in three Angelinos today is foreign born; as the city’s population grows, so does the number of Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, Jains and Sikhs living here. Religious diversity is even astounding within denominations, reports USC religion professor Don Miller, who specializes in the effects of immigration on religion. He points to a single Presbyterian church near the University Park campus, where Arabic-, Tagalog-, Spanish-, Korean- and English-speaking congregations take turns praying.

President Steven B. Sample talks about USC as an “urban laboratory” in the heart of multicultural Los Angeles. The same social forces make it a religious laboratory too, a place where spiritual diversity isn’t only studied in theory but encountered face to face.

On the gateway to the Pacific Rim, USC is now the nation’s No. 1 destination for international students. Currently 6,370 foreign nationals study here, the majority of them coming from India, China, South Korea and Taiwan. That’s not counting the thousands of students who are naturalized citizens and hyphenated Americans with strong roots in non-Western cultures and faiths.

No fewer than 57 religious groups are now active on the University Park campus, twice the number from a decade ago. The list goes well beyond the various flavors of Protestantism, Catholicism and Judaism – though this sturdy troika remains prominent. Growing numbers of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jains, Bahá’ís and Pagans are standing up to be counted. Among the Christians, evangelical and pentecostal sects are booming, while Latter Day Saints, Christian Scientists and the Seventh Day Adventists continue to flourish. And don’t underestimate the Coptic and Armenian Orthodox.

Even doubters are made welcome under USC’s multifaith tent. Last fall, Laemmle birthed a new group called Soul Search, designed for students “in quest.” With that group still in its infancy, Laemmle continues to seek new avenues for students to discuss metaphysical questions and spirituality outside any specific religious dogma.

An Episcopal priest with a dozen years of student affairs experience at USC, associate dean of religious life Elizabeth Davenport still preaches monthly at St. John’s Episcopal Church, where she is an associate priest.

As for the hard-core non-believers, “we’re very proud of our atheists and free-thinkers,” says associate dean of religious life Elizabeth Davenport. She smiles. “We think of them as the loyal opposition.”

Bill Buttrey, advisor to USC’s Atheist, Humanist and Freethinker Alliance, has no problem with being the “atheist chaplain,” as he’s sometimes playfully called. “Our members see skepticism as a life philosophy. That’s consistent with being part of the Office of Religious Life,” he says.

Like all the other campus faith groups, AHFA members must adhere to strict guidelines. High on the list: no denigrating of other faiths. Buttrey admits that can be tricky when your belief system dictates that every claim – be it secular or divine – be objectively tested.

Yet somehow they all get along. Much of the credit for that goes to one woman.

Sitting in her cozy office in the University Religious Center, Susan Laemmle is a study in contradictions. On her head she wears a beaded kippah – the skullcap worn by observant Jews. USC’s dean of religious life is a Reform rabbi and a past director of the Hillel Jewish Center. Yet she considers “serving as midwife” to the birth of the USC Hindu Student Organization one of the triumphs of her deanship, now in its eighth year and building steam.

When she began, there was no Buddhist student group, no Hindu student group, no Muslim religious director, no visible presence of Jains or Quakers or Unitarians or Pagans or Wiccans. Now they’re all here.

“We’re hoping to get a Zoroastrian group going soon,” Laemmle says with a twinkle.

You may wonder, what kind of rabbi goes around recruiting for other faiths? Answer: the religious-pluralist kind.

“I love being Jewish and a rabbi,” Laemmle says, “but my particular Jewish identity is not the issue. My role is representing all religious and spiritual traditions equally.”

Hindu student Nidhi Agrawal, with Susan Laemmle. A political science and biology major headed for medical school, she enrolled in a senior seminar on religion and politics. “It was amazing.”

Laemmle believes it’s vital for anyone doing this kind of work to be ordained – “because only then can we feel in our bones the urgency and non-negotiability of committed practice.” As for the inherent tensions between personal faith and public responsibility, Laemmle says she relishes the “constant oscillation between openness and drawing boundaries, between respect and rootedness.”

Philosopher John Rawls put his finger on the dilemma in his 1996 book Political Liberalism:

“How is it possible for there to exist over time a just and stable society of free and equal citizens who remain profoundly divided by reasonable religious, philosophical and moral doctrines?” he wrote.

For Laemmle, the answer lies in “taking calculated risks by encouraging honest – even if not always full – expression.”

A more practical question is, how does one accommodate an enormous diversity of religious needs, given limited resources and a roster of religious advisors who aren’t on the university’s payroll?

In 1996, USC reinvented its Chaplain’s Office as an Office of Religious Life, and replaced the university chaplain with a dean of religious life. In addition to the traditional functions of organizing and offering blessings at ritual occasions, providing spiritual and other counseling and finessing the intersections of religious holy days with the university calendar, the new job title carries the broader mission of infusing spiritual and ethical concerns into USC’s academic and social life. The existence of an Office of Religious Life means there’s oversight of things that had previously been left to chance.

Not everyone is pleased with the results of religious pluralism. Laemmle has dealt with her share of irate parents blaming USC for their child’s apostasy. Laemmle referees such conflicts as best she can, respecting the views of both parties. When students seek her out for counseling, she makes a point of directing them back to their own religious roots first. From there, the spiritual journey is freewheeling and uncircumscribed. In many cases, says Laemmle, the seeds of doubt have been present since high school, though carefully hidden from parents. Living away from home allows the spiritual journey to run its unimpeded course.

Some students today come from interfaith families, notes Davenport, and may arrive on campus truly unclear about their own beliefs. The college years are a time of intellectual and moral exploration. It’s naive to imagine that spiritual exploration won’t be part of the package, says Laemmle. Given that young people are going to explore, and that we want them to explore, the goal is to have them explore safely, under the supervision of accountable religious professionals and in plain view of the university community, she argues.

When you throw the doors wide open, of course, you risk letting in mischief makers. College campuses – and USC is no exception – are ripe hunting grounds for religious poachers.

Laemmle keeps a watchful eye on her religious leaders. Little by little, she has changed the climate here, regulating the practice of leafleting- and cracking down on door-to-door proselytizing in favor of more thoughtful kinds of religious discourse.

Even with the more aggressive sects, she finds it better to bring the messengers into the fold than to warn them off the premises. Signing on to the Religious Life roster means honoring a code of conduct.

The task of ministering to or advocating for a particular faith community falls to USC’s campus religious directors. Currently, 25 such professionals – including two rabbis, a Muslim imam, two Hindu swamis and a Buddhist monk – work at USC. All meet monthly with Laemmle and Davenport. They are subject to strict rules set out in a 25-page manual ending in eight pages of contracts, regarded by many in academe as the magna carta for achieving religious pluralism on a university campus.

This document clarified for the first time the mutual obligations of the university and the various religious directors, and it also created standards of practice. Groups have to adhere to truth-in-advertising rules, for example – they can’t bill a Bible study as a social event. They have to put their full name on every piece of publicity, every flyer, every e-mail. They can’t preach door-to-door in residence halls – once standard practice for some groups. And whatever they privately think, they may not denigrate another religious group publicly.

Laemmle is something of a celebrity among university-based religious professionals thanks to her 2001 Guidelines and Governance document. USC law and religion professor Ronald Garet was struck by this a few years ago at a meeting of the Association for College and University Religious Affairs.

It was clear to him that this gathering of mostly male, almost exclusively Christian chaplains “recognized that Susan is doing something special, that she is a pioneer,” he says.

Judging by that homogeneous group, you’d never guess the country had gone through 30 years of profound demographic change. The religious establishment at American universities remains predominantly Christian. There’s a danger in that, says Garet, himself a Protestant. Even if a chaplain is a thoroughgoing religious pluralist, as a Christian she may give the false impression that she speaks for the shared religious views of the university.

It’s a problem Laemmle doesn’t have. “Because she is a rabbi rather than a Protestant minister, I don’t think people look at Susan when she stands up and speaks at university events and assume she’s representing the designated faith of USC. She’s there to represent everybody,” Garet says.

He sees Laemmle’s “outsider” status through membership in a minority religion as “an extraordinary opportunity to imagine how the Office of Religious Life should relate to all the religions represented on the campus.” Garet chairs the strategic planning committee formed last year by the Provost’s Office and charged with the task of “thinking big” on the broad topic of campus religious life.

One big idea already percolating to the surface is the dream of a new multifaith center built where the University Religious Center now stands.

True, the University Park community abounds with houses of prayer. Within the square mile surrounding USC are no fewer than 20 religious institutions for students to choose from. There’s St. John’s Episcopal Church at Adams and Figueroa, but some students prefer nearby St. Philip’s. St. Mark’s at Vermont and West 36th, with its active community outreach, draws a fair number of civic-minded Lutherans.

Mormon students Derek and Abigail Allen, whose usual place of worship is the Latter Day Saints church at Vermont and Jefferson, in front of the Masjid Umar Ibn-Al Khattab, a mosque a few blocks south at Exposition.

For Catholic students, besides the USC Catholic Center, there’s St. Agnes and St. Vincent de Paul, both on Adams Boulevard. Close by are two Mormon churches (one Spanish-speaking), a Christian Science church, a Korean Presbyterian church, an African Methodist and a Baptist church, the Senshin Buddhist Temple and the Umar Ibn-Al Khattab mosque – all within easy walking distance of campus.

For Jewish students, there’s the campus Hillel Center and Chabad House, along with the abundant resources of Hebrew Union College, the Reform seminary on Hoover Boulevard that doubles as the Jewish studies department of USC.

“We consider ourselves somewhat fortunate, incidentally, that we have no historic church in the center of campus – no Sunday services to manage, no cruciform building to adapt to today’s very different religious needs,” says Davenport.

Contrary to popular belief, the United University Church does not belong to USC. And the University Religious Center, though it houses the Office of Religious Life, isn’t under Laemmle’s control. Paid for by Christian groups decades ago, the current center with its glass-walled Fishbowl Chapel is a tight squeeze for USC’s 40 or so Judeo-Christian groups. It misses the mark completely in meeting the needs of non-Western traditions.

Consider, for example, the difficulty of reserving the chapel for Muslim prayers, which occur five times a day and change according to the hour of sunrise and sunset.

“We need a place where Muslims can pray, where Hindus can worship, where Buddhists can meditate,” says Davenport, a religious pluralist cut from the same cloth as Laemmle.

Davenport is an Episcopal priest with a dozen years of student affairs experience at USC. She signed on as Laemmle’s lieutenant last summer.

Among other things, she’s been tapped to do for the Health Sciences campus what Laemmle has already done for University Park.

For example, Davenport is initiating a project to educate future physicians how different religious requirements may conflict with a doctor’s orders. “If you tell a Muslim patient to take his pills three times a day with food during Ramadan, that’s not going to happen,” she says.

Davenport also plans to migrate the most successful programs of the Office of Religious Life – such as the popular “What Matters to Me and Why” series of soul-baring faculty talks – to the Health Sciences campus.

In the basement of the mosque, Derek and Abigail Allen clasp hands as they give thanks for the delicious saffron rice, eggplant stew and grilled koobideh they are about to receive. The married students’ usual place of worship is a few blocks north of here, the Latter Day Saints church at Vermont and Jefferson. But this Friday, the Allens are visiting the Masjid Umar Ibn-Al Khattab at Vermont and Exposition.

A section of the mosque had been cordoned off for the USC guests – seated in folding chairs apart from the Muslim worshippers who stand, bow and kneel at their midday prayers. At the service’s conclusion, a woman had pressed chocolates into the visitors’ hands and invited them down to the social hall for lunch and an informal discussion. Before tucking into the Middle Eastern feast, the USC guests browse a literature table filled with pamphlets refuting common stereotypes about Islam – that it legitimizes the oppression of women, that it advocates the killing of non-Muslims, and so on. Pretty soon conversation is flowing. A Turkish student is explaining about the 90 names of Allah, and the Christian students are discovering, to their amazement, that the Koran calls Jesus “al-Masih” – the Messiah.

The following Monday, students milling around Trousdale Parkway at lunchtime encounter a Religious Explorations Fair. Planned by Laemmle and Davenport in conjunction with the 27-member, student-run Interfaith Council, the event eschews the customary “tabling” associated with campus fairs. Instead passersby are invited to meditate with a Buddhist monk, discuss karma with a swami, learn to write their names (or God’s) in Arabic calligraphy, try their hand at swinging incense or move to the rhythms of a gospel choir.

The fair is strictly informational – no proselytizing allowed. There’s no need to be defensive. After a while, students feel safe to stop and stare, maybe smile, ask a question.

It’s Milton’s free marketplace of religious ideas. Buy all your produce at one stall, or cherry-pick what looks best from each; take free samples or buy nothing at all.

“People ask me, is it OK for a Christian to meditate?” says Davenport.

Never mind what her Anglican forebears would have said. She gives the religious pluralist’s answer: “Of course it is.”

Amen to that.