About the Office of Religious Life
Mission Statement
Fostering a vibrant university community that encourages the pursuit of meaning through spiritual reflection and free inquiry, provides fair opportunities to participate in religious life, advances mutual understanding and respect among differing traditions - and in all these ways, strengthens us to actively engage in building a just and peaceful world.
To these ends, the Office and its Deans seek ways to encourage:
- spiritual wholeness
- moral reasoning
- personal responsibility
- community cohesion: a caring community
- active engagement in the search for meaning
- a lively conversation about the ways of knowing and contributing
- religious commitment within the context of religious pluralism
- energetic engagement with religious diversity
About Our Office
What?
USC’s Office of Religious Life sponsors a variety of opportunities for exploring the spiritual dimensions of your life and learning. We can help you find a religious home base or form a new group, handle an ethical dilemma or research a paper topic. The Office sponsors campus programs with a moral, religious or spiritual focus. It co-sponsors events with other university units and partnerships of student religious groups. And we are there for the entire USC community in times of celebration and loss, to offer benedictions at university convocations and to help organize memorial services as needed. Under ORL leadership, USC presented 9/11 at USC: A Day of Remembrance on September 11, 2002; and it created ONEUSC to coordinate campus responses to national crises.
Who?
The Dean of Religious Life, Varun Soni, is delighted to meet with you for conversation or counseling, in his office or anywhere on campus. He serves as the university’s liaison to all organized religious groups at USC. Mrs. Sherry Caudle, Office Administrator, and Tim Conley, Front Desk Coordinator, are also available to assist individual students or groups in finding the right group, person or resources.
Why?
Whether you’re searching for direction or already committed to a faith, the Office of Religious Life will respect your individuality and honor your convictions. We’re here to help you move toward wholeness – of mind, body, psyche and spirit. The university’s support of the Office of Religious Life fits within it’s overall mission: “the development of human beings and society as a whole through the cultivation and enrichment of the human mind and spirit.”
Where?
The Office of Religious Life (ORL) is located in Room 106 of the University Religious Center (URC), just east of the Student Health Center & just south of Jefferson. In 1964, the URC was built by the university in partnership with several Christian denominations. It now includes both the multi-faith Fishbowl Chapel and the Reverend Thomas Kilgore, Jr. Chapel of the Cross. The use of rooms in the URC may be scheduled through the ORL at (213) 740-6110 or complete our on-line form.