(RNS) — Ask a college chaplain, and you’ll hear a story behind the pro-Palestinian protests on American college campuses that is more complicated, and in some ways less dire, than what you’re seeing on television or in your news app.Media accounts of the pro-Palestinian protests and counterprotests have focused on unwelcome encampments, fights between rival groups and arrests by police. But the conflict in Israel and Gaza, and the profound issues it raises, some campus spiritual leaders say, have done what colleges and universities are meant to do: prompted them to reflect on what it means to be moral agents and to assess their own diverse faiths.
Whether students participated in encampments, prayer vigils, Shabbat rituals or supporting other students, they were growing spiritually and learning how to claim their own place in history, the chaplains said.
Janet Cooper Nelson, a United Church of Christ minister who has long headed Brown University’s chaplaincy team, said the students at the university where encampments ended after officials agreed to vote on student demands this fall represented a wide spectrum of beliefs.
Usama Malik. (Courtesy photo)
At the large public campus of the University of Texas at Austin, Muslim students have told Usama Malik, a chaplain with Muslim Space, a community-building organization in Austin, that their trust in university administrators and public officials has been damaged by aggressive attempts to clear the encampments, even as solidarity among students of different religions has increased in past weeks, often with support from local pastors, faculty and even parents.
Having seen art-making workshops, a teach-in, a Shabbat service and an interfaith prayer vigil in recent days, said Malik, “you’re really seeing a variety of things that often get missed in the way the news media has been covering the story.” The events, often student-led, are “diverse, eclectic and very moving.”
At Brown, said Cooper Nelson, students have become more involved in campus politics and their own faith issues. Those she has encountered “are prayerful, spiritually formed on the inside,” she said. “You see the students weighing the ideas and their decisions about engaging those ideas or moving them forward, very much based on how they understand what it is to live a life that’s grounded spiritually.”
Sr. Jenn Schaaf, a Dominican sister and assistant chaplain at Yale University’s St. Thomas More Chapel & Center, said the war for many students is by no means an abstraction. “Like the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, we have students who have relatives in Israel and Palestine. They are worried about people they know,” she wrote in an email.
“I’m grateful that our students are engaged in the religious and political sphere,” she added. “I’m also grateful that they are safe.”
Overall, the chaplains who spoke to RNS seem united in admiration for their students’ capacity to form their own opinions, make moral ju …
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Whether students participated in encampments, prayer vigils, Shabbat rituals or supporting other students, they were growing spiritually and learning how to claim their own place in history, the chaplains said.
Janet Cooper Nelson, a United Church of Christ minister who has long headed Brown University’s chaplaincy team, said the students at the university where encampments ended after officials agreed to vote on student demands this fall represented a wide spectrum of beliefs.
Usama Malik. (Courtesy photo)
At the large public campus of the University of Texas at Austin, Muslim students have told Usama Malik, a chaplain with Muslim Space, a community-building organization in Austin, that their trust in university administrators and public officials has been damaged by aggressive attempts to clear the encampments, even as solidarity among students of different religions has increased in past weeks, often with support from local pastors, faculty and even parents.
Having seen art-making workshops, a teach-in, a Shabbat service and an interfaith prayer vigil in recent days, said Malik, “you’re really seeing a variety of things that often get missed in the way the news media has been covering the story.” The events, often student-led, are “diverse, eclectic and very moving.”
At Brown, said Cooper Nelson, students have become more involved in campus politics and their own faith issues. Those she has encountered “are prayerful, spiritually formed on the inside,” she said. “You see the students weighing the ideas and their decisions about engaging those ideas or moving them forward, very much based on how they understand what it is to live a life that’s grounded spiritually.”
Sr. Jenn Schaaf, a Dominican sister and assistant chaplain at Yale University’s St. Thomas More Chapel & Center, said the war for many students is by no means an abstraction. “Like the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, we have students who have relatives in Israel and Palestine. They are worried about people they know,” she wrote in an email.
“I’m grateful that our students are engaged in the religious and political sphere,” she added. “I’m also grateful that they are safe.”
Overall, the chaplains who spoke to RNS seem united in admiration for their students’ capacity to form their own opinions, make moral ju …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]