Today's college students inhabit a world where news from the four corners of the earth arrives instantaneously and global communication is commonplace. Yet people still grapple with millennium-old problems.  As news headlines remind us, the phenomenon of religious differences is among the most prominent causes of human confllict.  If we wish to create a more peaceful future, we simply must help our young people navigate religious differences.

For the past decade, the University of Southern California has been bringing together students of diverse faiths through its Office of Religious Life.  The Office accredits more than 70 student religious organizations from 11 different religious traditions, encouraging each group in its own particular practice and providing opportunities for multi-faith learning that have garnered national acclaim, placing USC religious life among the top five in the country.

USC now proposes to create a setting unparalleled in any other instutution of higher education -- a center dedicated to interfaith learning and particular practice side by side with the academic study of religion.  Designated The Multi-Faith Center for Research, Reflection and Practice, this will be an educational entity as well as a physical place where students' informed awareness of world religions, including their cultural and political context, will be stimulated by a broad range of meaningful contacts and programs.

This innovative approach requires a specially designed, synergistic architectural setting -- a setting that supports conversation across religious and intellectual boundaries, both formally and informally.  The Multi-Faith Center for Research, Reflection and Practice will house the Center for Religion and Civic Culture and the Office of Religious Life, while also providing the variety of spaces urgently needed for interfaith groups and gatherings, particular faith communities, and programs focused on spiritual and moral issues.

This would be the first new interfaith center of its kind at a major research university, and unique in its partnership between researched and practiced religion.  This partnership will help USC take even fuller advantage of its urban location in Southern California, which is a microcosm of the world's religions.  Students will benefit from the focus upon holistic development of spirit, emotion and intellect, enabling them to mature into rounded, capable, resilient human beings.  Researchers will benefit from the opportunity to interact with students who practice or question the very ideas that these scholars examine with academic rigor.

The Office of Religious Life at USC seeks funding to create The Multi-Faith Center for Research, Reflection and Practice, and to initiate the imaginative programs and groundbreaking research that will make that Center come alive.  The projected cost for The Multi-Faith Center for Research, Reflection and Practice is $12 million, based on combined structures of approximately 27,000 square feet, not including outdoor spaces.  An additional programming endowment of $5 million will enable the physical structure to fulfill its institutional promise for generations to come; and other giving opportunities are available.  For a detailed budget contact Rabbi Susan Laemmle, Ph.D., Dean of Religious Life at USC, at laemmle@usc.edu or 213-740-6110.

What If...   a brochure on building the new Multi-Faith Center for Research, Reflection and Practice