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On an overcast Wednesday morning, a half-dozen people from myriad backgrounds practice Buddhist meditation in the quiet stillness of the Duke Chapel crypt. Upstairs in the Memorial Chapel, a devout Christian prays next to an occasional churchgoer during a nondenominational worship service, offered every weekday morning throughout the academic year. Later that afternoon, students gather at the Freeman Center for Jewish Life to plan Sukkoth and Simchat Torah activities, while Muslim students meet with a Durham imam to plan a campus-wide celebration and meal to mark the end of Ramadan.
In some ways, Duke maintains strong ties to its origins in the Methodist church. Two-thirds of the thirty-six-member board of trustees is approved by the United Methodist Church, twelve each from the North Carolina Conference and the Western North Carolina Conference. Duke Divinity School, founded in 1926 as the first of the university's graduate professional schools, is one of thirteen seminaries founded and supported by the Methodist church. And Bibles are still offered to all graduating seniors at commencement.
Yet the population of Duke today is far more ethnically and geographically diverse than ever before. Naturally, many students arrive on campus with strongly held religious beliefs not unlike those of Duke students a generation ago and connect with like-minded classmates through worship services and social activities. Others grow up exposed to a wide range of cultural and religious expressions—or none at all—and don't align themselves with any one set of beliefs. Still others belong to major world religions such as Hinduism or Islam that have historically not had high visibility or presence at Duke. Once here, the increased exposure—from peers and professors—to other theological beliefs and practices, and a concomitantly sharpened awareness of global instability fueled by religious conflict, has led many young adults to consider the significance of faith—in their own lives and in the lives of their classmates.
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As students explore questions of religious meaning and identity through informal conversations and organized gatherings, university administrators are pondering the role of religion both on campus and in an increasingly interconnected world. How do international Arab-Israeli tensions play out at Duke? What do the towering spires and Gothic splendor of the chapel represent to economically disenfranchised neighborhoods in Durham? Is Duke a welcoming environment for those who worship God, Allah, Brahma—or no deity at all?
"Duke was established in the mainline liberal Protestant tradition, in an era when it was possible to imagine that that tradition would continue to be the dominant one," says the Rev. Samuel Wells, dean of the chapel and research professor of Christian ethics. "But that era is over."
The increasingly heterogeneous nature of religion on college campuses nationwide can cause sharp divides. Baylor University continues to be embroiled in disputes over the teaching of intelligent design. At Dartmouth College, a Christian student speaking at the 2005 convocation sparked outrage when he said that Jesus "is the solution to flawed people like corrupt Dartmouth alums." And at the College of William and Mary, President Gene Nichol created a stir when he ordered a cross that had been on the altar of the college chapel since 1940 removed because it "sends an unmistakable message that the chapel belongs more fully to some of us than others."
At Duke, there have been relatively few tensions between disparate ethnic and religious groups. The most recent exception was in 2004, when the Palestinian Solidarity Movement held its national conference on campus, resulting in a wide range of protests and passionate discussions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, academic freedom, and terrorism. (Launched in 2002, the PSM is a mostly campus-based network of groups in North America that endorses divestment from Israel and an end to U.S. aid to Israel, among other points.)
Since then, the campus has been surprisingly free of religious tensions. That could change in an instant, of course—an editorial in The Chronicle or a contentious speaker could set off heated exchanges over religious divides. But for now, the climate seems to be one of acceptance of, and respect for, the variety of religious beliefs and practices within the Duke community.
Before coming to Duke, sophomore Christina Booth regularly attended Sunday worship services with her family at Atlanta's First Presbyterian Church. During freshman orientation, "I met a much more diverse crowd than I expected," Booth says. "For example, I never knew a Muslim in high school, so I hadn't really thought about Christian-Muslim relations."
Booth's roommate, Shyamlee Patel, was reared by Hindu parents in New York, attended predominantly Jewish schools, and celebrated Shabbat and Hanukkah more frequently than the Hindu festival Diwali. In elementary school, she envisioned that a national flag representing her various identities would be a combination of the U.S., Indian, and Israeli flags. "I'm much more of a practicing Jew than a Hindu, but many of my concrete beliefs about life are rooted in Hinduism," says Patel. "My mom calls me a 'Hinjew.' "
Booth and Patel both became involved in the Interfaith Dialogue Project (IDP), a nearly decade-old initiative co-sponsored by the Kenan Institute for Ethics and Duke Chapel to foster awareness of religious pluralism and diversity. Booth was the instructor this past fall for the IDP "Religious Traditions and Interfaith Dialogue" house course, which explores such topics as the concept of jihad in Islam, Iranian wedding ceremonies, the status of women in various world religions, violence in the name of God, and sexuality and spirituality. (House courses are half-credit, pass-fail courses that serve as a bridge between students' academic and residential lives.) Booth also led weekly Bible study groups for first-year women through her membership in Campus Crusade for Christ.
"IDP and Campus Crusade for Christ are two groups that you wouldn't think would be allies," says Booth, who is considering becoming a physician or a minister. "I became involved in IDP because I was curious about Judaism, since it has the same roots as Christianity, but also about Hinduism and other non-Western religions, because I'd never really thought about them before. I studied Latin in high school, and it helped me in a number of other areas academically. That's the way I see IDP: The more I learn about other religions, the more I understand and appreciate my own faith, and that makes me a better Christian."
Gaining a deeper appreciation for one's own religion can also happen serendipitously. Elissa Lerner came to Duke from New York's Forest Hills neighborhood, a community with a historically large Jewish population. "Freshman year I met plenty of friends who had never met a Jew before and were totally baffled by what keeping kosher entailed or how Jewish services work," says Lerner. She recalls her roommate's reaction when she started working on a Torah reading for Rosh Hashanah. "She was amazed when I showed her what a Torah looks like and how to chant the words.
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