June 28, 2007
Chaplains go multi-religiousReligion
When I went to college, there were only 3 chaplains - a Protestant minister who was the University Chaplain, a Catholic priest who was the Catholic chaplain and a Rabbi who worked for Hillel. Beyond that, the only on-campus resource was the person hired to run a weekly interfaith service.
Now things are different - both universities and militaries have started to add non Judeo-Christian chaplains. The biggest change is the addition of Muslim chaplains, which actually first started in the US at a Catholic university:
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Brown’s brown Muslim chaplain |
In 1999 Georgetown University hired Yahya Hendi - the first full-time Muslim chaplain at an American university. Today [article was written in 2005], the Muslim Students Association (MSA) estimates that 14 institutions of higher education provide for a Muslim chaplain. [Link]
Now even Yale (whose founders split from Harvard because it was too religiously lax) has a Muslim chaplain. Many of these chaplains are younger and from more untraditional backgrounds compared to mosque imams because there is no standard career path:
At 24, Sohaib Nazeer Sultan could easily be mistaken for a graduate student as he walks the campus of Trinity College… A former freelance journalist in Chicago, Sultan began studying in the Islamic Chaplaincy program at Hartford Seminary last year. It is the only program in the country that trains and certifies Muslim chaplains for work in hospitals, prisons, universities and the U.S. military… In May, his book, “The Koran for Dummies,” was published as part of the “Dummies” reference book series. [Link]
Similarly, the Yale university chaplain is a 35 year old Pakistani-born, UT Austin trained engineer who is working on his Ph.D in Islamic studies. (There are also Hindu and Sikh chaplains, although fewer of them. Swami Yogatmananda at UMass Dartmouth was the only Hindu chaplain I could find at a US university, although there is one at University of Toronto as well. The only Sikh chaplain I found in North America was Manjit Singh, the first non-Christian director of Chaplaincy services at McGill University. All of these chaplains are considerably older than their Muslim counterparts.)
If you’re non Jewish, Christian or Atheist, would this have made a difference to you in college? Would you have gone to more campus services if they had been of your faith?
UPDATE:
On a related note [thanks Salil]:
For what is believed to be the first time in its history, the U.S. Senate will on July 12 be opened with a Hindu prayer, the Senate Chaplain’s Office confirmed Monday. For more than 200 years, the Senate has opened each workday with a prayer usually delivered by the Senate Chaplain, currently Barry Black, a Seventh Day Adventist. [Link]
ennis on June 28, 2007 03:09 PM in Religion · T·r·a·c·k·b·a·c·k address · Direct link · Email post
He's cute!
Chaplain yendral yenna ? Charlie Chaplain madiri ya ?
When you said multi-religious, I though you were covering this story!
Priest goes Muslim, but remains Christian
Episcopalian prays at mosque Fridays, joins in church service Sunday mornings
That reminds me of the Messianic Jews, or Jews For Jesus.
Christians who follow all the Torah customs or Jews who accept Jesus as the Messiah.
Seems like Islam and Christianity are even more compatible and interchangable because muslims accept the virgin birth of Jesus as well as his crucifixion and resurrection and ascension.
I think we need more objectification of religious figures around here. I encounter it elsewhere - you should hear my gay friends talk about the Pope's fashion choices (they call him "the gay pope").
Nah-uh. No way is the pope gay. He wouldn't have let his boys wear black shoes with a brown belt. Yuck! It makes me want to have a catechism right now.
i take that as free lisence to comment on the looks of every womans picture on sepia mutiny and ignor all the comments about women being objectified and not men. objectify away ladies!
for what it's worth, i've been making the case that the term judeo-christian is an abuse of language, and confuses more than it informs.
also: Seems like Islam and Christianity are even more compatible and interchangable because muslims accept the virgin birth of Jesus as well as his crucifixion and resurrection and ascension.
from wiki:
Muslims, however, do not share the Christian belief in the crucifixion or divinity of Jesus. Muslims believe that Jesus' crucifixion was a divine illusion and that he ascended bodily to heaven. Most Muslims also believe that he will return to the earth in the company of the Mahdi once the earth has become full of sin and injustice at the time of the arrival of Islam's Antichrist-like Dajjal.
this is what i recall.
am i the only one disturbed by razib's encyclopedic knowledge of religion. what would we think if andrea dworkin could name every ron jeremy film?
I think I probably would have, especially if the chaplin was someone on the younger side. I'm Hindu and the temple was driving distance from campus, but me being a broke student, I didn't have a car (this was in the pre- Zip/flex car days). I'm sure I could have found someone to drive me, but I conveniently used that as an excuse not to be as 'good' about it.
what would we think if andrea dworkin could name every ron jeremy film?
the analogy is off base. dworkin wanted to rework male female relationships (her lesbianism was political from what i have read, she was by inclination a heterosexual). i don't feel that reworking human nature so that religion does not exist is feasible. it's just a fact of the universe that most people are religious, and i simply speak up against its more annoying or dangerous manifestations (though fundamentally i do think it's all really no different than running around a 15 foot wooden penis thinking it will influence the fates).
Muslims, however, do not share the Christian belief in the crucifixion or divinity of Jesus. Muslims believe that Jesus' crucifixion was a divine illusion and that he ascended bodily to heaven. Most Muslims also believe that he will return to the earth in the company of the Mahdi once the earth has become full of sin and injustice at the time of the arrival of Islam's Antichrist-like Dajjal.
Interesting. Gaudiya Vaishnavas believe that Sita's kidnapping by Ravana as relayed in the Ramayana was also a sort of "divine illusion" or maya. The mayik Sita was kidnapped while the original Sita was always with Ram in one form or another.
Muslims do however accept the virgin birth and prophethood of Jesus. Something most Jews do not accept, right?
Muslims do however accept the virgin birth and prophethood of Jesus. Something most Jews do not accept, right?
a religious ruling in the late 1st century established that jesus was not the messiah and rejected his claims (in part because in the gospels he states that he shall return before the passing of the generation which lived while he preaced, and that generation had passed on). the only jews who accept jesus' virgin birth and prophethood (and divinity) are "messianic jews," which is pretty obviously just a christian movement in jewish garb aiming to convert (in other words, it isn't genuine religious syncretism, the ethnography is pretty clear that messianic jews are just on a way station group and don't constitute a separate and distinction tradition).
I doubt that "chaplains" of different religious backgrounds make non-Christians more likely to get involved in the religious life of their university - the very idea of a chaplain is premised on the Christian tradition and the role and expectations might not be much like those of a Muslim imam or a Hindu priest. I remember at my (liberal New England) US university the idea of "multifaith" services was just beginning to take hold in the early 90s and they'd hang flag-like things with symbols of dif religions (om, written Allah, etc) along the aisle and do multifaith services with the occasional Muslim getting up in front of people and giving a speech about their religious tradition etc etc. Nobody came to those things, and multifaith services are, I daresay, profoundly irrelevant to those who are actually religious. The Muslims I knew went to the local Islamic Society chapter, and the Jews (if there were any who were observant) went to synagogues in the community.
I'm not sure universities should be hiring chaplains at all, or have an official place of worship, because these will inevitably be Christian and generally Protestant, except for univs like Georgetown) churches that were part of the university from the days before anyone considered that Jews and Muslims and Hindus would be significant members of the student body. If the university truly wanted to be "multifaith," it would probably have to build separate places of worship for all the major faiths represented in its student body, instead of tacking new symbols onto churches and expecting people to believe that they could function as temples and mosques too. But that sort of frantic equidistant secularism is something best left to the Indian state, not an American university.
I think we have a Hindu chaplain here at MIT...he's not full-time or anything, but we do have services here...I used to go back when I was Hindu =)
I agree that Judeo-Christian does not adequately describe the dominant ethos of the US. I would use the term Abrahamic but I am afraid SpoorLam will have my Hindu balls painted saffron
If it weren't for the current geopolitical situation, I would say that a Muslim would have a better chance of getting elected President of the US than a Hindu/Buddhist or "out" agnostic/atheist.
the very idea of a chaplain is premised on the Christian tradition and the role and expectations might not be much like those of a Muslim imam or a Hindu priest.
i think an imam is a lot like a protestant chaplain. or a jewish rabbi. jews have priests (cohens), but they don't anything now cuz the temple isn't around. islam has no official priesthood (though some shia groups are pretty close) though operationally a ulema always develops which takes the role of spiritual guidance and counseling. my understanding is that hindu priests generally play a purely sacramental role.
I agree that Judeo-Christian does not adequately describe the dominant ethos of the US. I would use the term Abrahamic but I am afraid SpoorLam will have my Hindu balls painted saffron
shorter point of my post above: in many ways judaism resembles islam more than it does christianity. this is especially true with "orthodox" judaism (reform judaism far less so because of the deemphasis on law). the term "judeo-christian" was created and promoted in the 1950s for political reasons as america crystallized into a catholic, protestant and jewish nation.
If it weren't for the current geopolitical situation, I would say that a Muslim would have a better chance of getting elected President of the US than a Hindu/Buddhist or "out" agnostic/atheist.
muslim and atheists are about the same (most polls actually show a slight muslim edge).
The idea of a Hindu chaplain is novel, Hindu priests haven't traditionally ministered to a flock...they are pretty much entirely concerned with ritual. If I were in need of spiritual counsel I would be far more likely to seek out a "Buddhist" (in quotes because I think any attempt to break down Indic religions into Hindu/Jain/Buddhist is unnecessary outside of academia)
louiecypher #19
I don't think that's the case with the Dalit Buddhist movement which is using the theological distinctions between Hinduism and Buddhism as a cornerstone for their activism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Buddhism
Besides, Tibetan Buddhism (which could arguably classified as an Indic/South Asian religion) is distinctly different from Hinduism and this difference has very particular political, historical, and cultural implications.
This attempt to subsume very distinct religious and theological traditions under Hinduism is quite misleading historically. For instance, the word "nastik" which in modern Hindi is used to mean "atheist" was actually used to refer to Jains and Buddhists (and other heterodox sects) back in the day when relations b/w these groups could be quite fraught.
LouieCypher wrote:
I think any attempt to break down Indic religions into Hindu/Jain/Buddhist is unnecessary outside of academia
Would your average Hindu-American be comfortable with a Sokka Gakkai chaplain? Buddhism varies.
For instance, the word "nastik" which in modern Hindi is used to mean "atheist" was actually used to refer to Jains and Buddhists
roman pagans accused christians of being atheists too. they rejected the gods.
That's a political move on their part to convert to Buddhism. There are plenty of sects that go under the heading of "hinduism" that would not discriminate against them, such as Gaudiya Vaishnavism for one.
Buddhists are atheists, as far as I have come to understand in my conversations with them, and my limited readings. Don't know what the concept of "Ishwar" is in Jainism, if it even exists at all. At least in labeling the Buddhists as "nastik" the Hindus are not wrong. Don't know about the Jains. Any Jains on this site? What is the concept of "ishwar" in your religion, if any?
Portmanteau: You have assumed that I want to subsume Buddhism and Jainism under Hinduism. You people look for Hindutvaadi obscurantists where they don't exist. Reread my post, I put Hinduism/Jainism/Buddhism under the heading of "Indic religions" as opposed to Hinduism. My traditional, upper caste Tamil non-Brahmin Hindu family visits and venerates Jain & Hindu sites in Karnataka & TN and recognizes the Dalai Lama as a holy man. The idea that there is spiritual wisdom in these other faiths is not atypical amongst Hindus. The Ambedkarites are, understandably, rejecting the Manu smrti and the caste system which is most definitely part of Vedic Hinduism. That they equate Hinduism with the Vedic religion is an issue of semantics.
Ikram: Most Hindus would recognize commonalities with Vajrayana & Theravada Buddhism. I don't see why an Indian would go far afield to Sakka Gokkai or Zen (despite theories that Dhyana originated in S. India)which are very much rooted in the East Asian context
i think manju was referring more to andrew dworkin's anti-pornography stance.
Razib, the imam often performs the tasks of a faqih/mufti in immigrant communities, but imams are not necessarily trained in fiqh even if people come to them with similar needs. In any event, what people often seek out in organised religion is a sense of community and ritual and not just "ministering" and so I'd imagine that most people would rather seek out established community churches, mosques, temples, etc than going to the intellectual university-appointed "chaplain" for spiritual guidance. And if it's spiritual debate and considering what religion has to say about the challenges of student life, student religious groups would be better suited. I could be wrong and perhaps students these days are more inclined to join campus religious activities and perhaps universities are better able to provide spaces for worship.
louiecypher, my criticism of your post was with this part: "I think any attempt to break down Indic religions into Hindu/Jain/Buddhist is unnecessary outside of academia." What I was trying to point out is that people have indeed used distinctions between "Indic religions" to make political points i.e. such distinctions seem to have implications outside of academic discussions of Hinduism. I'm happy for your family - they seem to respect wisdom from many traditions. Personally, I'm agnostic and my faith only shows when I'm in trouble or when I badly need the world to make sense.
"The idea that there is spiritual wisdom in these other faiths is not atypical amongst Hindus."
Again, my post does not contradict this point and I would agree with you on this.
Sultana:
"That's a political move on their part to convert to Buddhism."
Yes, Sultana that's what I was trying to establish. That Buddhism has been perceived by these people to be more egalitarian and more socially just than Vedic Hinduism (as a basis of societal and religious organization)and their public conversion in large numbers makes a political statement, rather than (or in addition to) only being a matter of personal religious faith.
In re nastika and astika (from the venerable Wikipedia):
"In modern Indian languages, 'āstika' and 'nāstika' generally mean 'theist' and 'atheist', respectively. But in Sanskrit philosophical literature, 'āstika' means 'one who believes in the authority of the Vedas' or 'one who believes in life after death'. ('nāstika' means the opposite of these). The word is used here in the first sense. In the second sense, even the Jaina and Bauddha schools are 'āstika', as they believe in life after death. The six orthodox schools are 'āstika', and the Cārvāka is 'nāstika' in both the senses."
Jyostna (#25): I don't exactly understand your statement there. Could you please elaborate/clarify, so I can respond to your point.
oh and I just wanted to mention that the two most fervent soka gakaai practitioners i know are two girls who grew up in delhi and ended up actually at soka u in california. apparently, delhi now has a pretty fast growing population of soka gakkai practitioners, casual or otherwise (disclaimer: i don't know very much about their beliefs, and intersections+divergence from other types of buddhist practice).
so yeah, some indians are going "far afield" for whatever reasons.
'd imagine that most people would rather seek out established community churches, mosques, temples, etc than going to the intellectual university-appointed "chaplain" for spiritual guidance
at some universities and colleges in the USA the non-christian community consists of local foreign students.
No, not even that. The term sacrament is specific to Christianity, and describes an act that is meant to mediate divine grace (all Christian ideas). This differs very much from practices in other traditions, say for instance, certain Islamic practices, as the nikaah.
the words are different, but the psychological and sociological role is the same. just because one group runs around a circumcised wooden penis totem and another group runs around an uncircumcised penis totem doesn't mean that the two groups are doing something qualitatively different. the foreskin is secondary to the penis they're running around to feel closer to god.
Especially because the "psychology" and "sociology" your x-logicals are based on assume the thing they set out to study.
Psychobabble.
LOL. metaphysical obfuscation.
Portmaneau,
Of the 'six orthodox' schools one doesn't pay any heed to the afterworld, even certain samskara kriyas prescribed to favor the departed are in order to make life more pleasant for the karta and his/her family here on earth! So the astika/nastika mapping to theist/atheist is in error inasmuch as it refers to belief in the afterlife. The recognition of the Vedas isn't due to them as a homogeneous mass. There are different parts to the Vedas and they have a certain timeline and difference of focus right through the corpus.
I am simply trying to make clear how problematic the idea of a Hindu chaplain is. And of course since there is Razib holding forth on religion, it is hard to resist taking apart his assertions and pet simplisticities!
More psychobabble!
LOL. dude, are you trying to make yourself look obnoxiously stupid? metaphysics has nothing to do with psychology or psychoanalyis. *scratch head* at least get your insults right.
Portmanteau: My family does not need your pat on the head. My point is that this universalist ethos is typical amongst the mainstream, though I am sure people of little consequence outside of Marxist reading groups have a vested interest in disputing this.
Check out some original literature before you shoot off your mouth about philosophy and religion. Wikipedia is notoriously unreliable at times. Being a genetecist I am sure you know the value of deliberate study. Immerse yourself, learn some.
C'mon guys. We're not in grade school any more. Stop it with the name calling.
Ennisbhai,
Got it!
So what does a chaplain do and what the heck would a Hindu chaplain do? Would he/she be trained in a christian seminary or a chaplain school attached to one?
OK, I get it. But why would the so-called 'secular' institutions in the Christian west, like the army, universities, Congress, senate et al be concerned about ministering and progressive liberals consider it natural, while they and their counterparts will howl and cry foul at the hint of the 'almost unconscious use of Hindu religious symbolism and practices in fora where religion should have no entry'.
Since when were universities secular? Georgetown is an openly religious university, run by the Jesuits. The army has chaplains for morale, for a long time they were the only shrinks around. As for the Senate - that's a good question. Although it's funny that the Chaplain is from a group that most Christians would hardly consider Christian at all.
Razib, I was thinking of my Pakistani and indian friends in college - they went to Islamic Society meetings and met other muslims in the community, possibly because there wasn't really a space on campus, but then again, would you really want to do juma'a prayers on campus?
Most universities provide information about local houses of worship, and I think that's fine. I don't see that it's their job to provide for every religious group, and I think it's fine for private universities to hold on to their Christian chapels and acknowledge that they are Christian houses of worship (instead of trying to put silly symbolic flags up to deny it), though it's a bit off-putting when graduation ceremonies have Christian chaplains and prayers, it's not a huge deal. One can overlook it, esp those of us who went to Christian-run schools in India.
Public universities shouldn't have religious institutions on campus, IMO - no matter how much multifaith earnestness is involved, I can't think of anyone who uses such sites and it's all about symbolism and making everyone feel nice and liberal, when in reality those who are devout are probably not going to want to use a multifaith site. If a Muslim group or Hindu group or Christian group wants to use university halls and public spaces on particular days for prayer, they should be allowed to, just like any other group on campus. But I'm not comfortable with university-appointed religious counsellors.
P.S. Even the more devout Christians I've known in my many years on American campuses pretty much never went to the college chapel. They tended to go to local churches of their denomination. I get the impression that university-appointed chaplains, in trying to be all things to all people (usually liberal, non-denominational) end up not really satisfying anyone.
#23
"Buddhists are atheists, as far as I have come to understand in my conversations with them, and my limited readings. Don't know what the concept of "Ishwar" is in Jainism, if it even exists at all. At least in labeling the Buddhists as "nastik" the Hindus are not wrong. Don't know about the Jains. Any Jains on this site? What is the concept of "ishwar" in your religion, if any?"
Swami Vivekananda said somewhere that Buddism is agnostic and Jainism is atheistic.
The Jina teachings stress personal responsibility for one's jiva mistranslated as soul - a very different thing. There is no supreme being that must be 'worshipped' and 'prayed' to. There are Jain Mandirs and now what we see in the US; Hindu-Jain or Jain-Hindu Mandirs. Intermarriage among Hindus in Jains within a region happen all the time. An agnostic or an atheist cannot exist but outside the Abrahamic tradition (where even it is not quite so simple). Indifference or disinterest in the existence of God; or rejection of God's authority are not relevant to a tradition that has no place for such an entity. Every tradition in India has interpreted karma, dharma, rta, differently. Whether there is an ishvara or not is less interesting. Western scholarship unfortunately obsessed with casting every new tradition into the religious mould has completely lost its way in the study of dharmic or taoic traditions.
Regarding your reference to Yale's University's Muslim chaplain, Mahan Mizra whom you highlighted is the MUSLIM FELLOW with the Muslim Student Association at Yale University. He is NOT the chaplain. The Muslim chaplain is Sister Shamshad Sheikh. Her bio is at http://www.yale.edu/chaplain/staff.html and she is also the Associate Chaplain of the University and responsible for multi-faith initiatives.
The Sanskrit word "nastika" did not mean the same as the Hindi "nastik" ("atheist"). In fact, several so-called "Hindu" schools of philosophy, including Samkhya and Vaisesika, were atheistic in part or whole (meaning they denied the existence of an Iswara, Bhagavan, etc. who created the universe). But they were not nastikas.
Probably the oldest meaning of "nastika" is "one who denies the existence of worlds after death", while an "astika" was "one who accepts the existence of worlds after death" (This according to the 7th c. grammatical text Kasikavrtti). For this reason, the Buddhists and Jains considered themselves "astikas" (see, for instance, the Jain author Haribhadra's 8th c. Saddarsanasamuccaya).
And I know there are more Hindu chaplains in the U.S. than the one you mentioned at UMass (there's Swami Tyagananda at Harvard, for instance).