Two campus chaplaincy organizations merged to pool their resources in the face of a shifting and diversifying landscape for campus spiritual life.
The National Association of College and University Chaplains and the Association of College and University Religious Affairs will now become a single organization, the Association for Chaplaincy and Spiritual Life in Higher Education, or ACSLHE. Members celebrated the merger with an inaugural conference on Monday and Tuesday, called “Imagining the Possibilities.”
“As the distinctions that had served the preservations of two professional organizations began to fade, as resources across all of higher education tightened, it became increasingly clear that we would be stronger together – together to share our challenges, our vision, our support and our collective wisdom,” said ACSLHE Co-President Deanna Shorb, department head of the Center for Religion, Spirituality, and Social Justice and the dean of religious life at Grinnell College.
The new group boasts 471 members, who are approximately 74% Christian, 8% Jewish, 8% Muslim, 4% Buddhist and 0.5% Hindu. At the conference, chaplains reckoned with the need for more diverse leadership and new strategies to serve the full variety of backgrounds and faith traditions represented on today’s college campuses.
For religious inclusion to be a part of diversity work on campuses, “I think we have to turn the lens inward to ourselves …” said keynote speaker Dr. Varun Soni, who serves as the dean of religious life, as well as the vice provost for campus wellness and crisis intervention, at the University of Southern California.
Soni said he was the first Hindu to serve as the chief religious leader at an American university.
But “that was twelve years ago,” he added, “and I don’t see a whole lot of progress in our field in terms of what are the qualifications necessary in terms of overseeing religious and spiritual life.” By allowing an overrepresentation of Protestant ministers in these leadership roles, “I think we’re devaluing the diversity of our field and the many perspectives in a multi-religious context that we’re trying to offer to our students.”
