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Tag Archives: Religious Pluralism

Interview with Kerry Maloney, HDS Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life

04 Tuesday Aug 2020

Posted by HDS Admissions Blog in HDS Interviews

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chaplaincy, Community, HDS People, Hear & Now, Interview, Ministry, Noon Service, Religious Pluralism, Social Justice, Spiritual Practices, Spirituality, Student Life

Post by: Kerry Maloney, HDS Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life (RSL) 

Kerry Maloney has served the HDS community since 2004 as HDS Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life and, prior to this role, as the Associate Director of Ministry Studies. In this particular moment, we thought it would be helpful to hear from the HDS Chaplain about the different ways the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life has responded to the challenges present in the work of our community today. If you are in need of some spiritual resources, we encourage you to explore the “Spiritual Resources During the COVID-19 Pandemic” created by RSL. 

Kerry Maloney, HDS Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life (RSL) 
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Working at the Pluralism Project

30 Monday Mar 2020

Posted by HDS Admissions Blog in Student Life

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Jobs, Pluralism Project, Religious Pluralism

Editor’s Note: At HDS, many students work in on-campus, part-time jobs, some of which are research positions. In this article MTS student Margaret Hamm talks about her job as a Research Associate for The Pluralism Project. 

Post by: Margaret Hamm, MTS ‘21 

Since September, I’ve worked as a student Research Associate at The Pluralism Project. For those not already familiar with its mission, The Pluralism Project is a Harvard Divinity School initiative that strives to explore the constantly changing religious landscape of the United States through educational tools and resources. As a first-year MTS student with research interests in the history of religious freedom in America and First Amendment law, I was immediately drawn to The Pluralism Project and its initiatives, and I have thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to deepen my own understanding of religious pluralism in America. 

Photo courtesy of STEPHANIE MITCHELL and the HDS Office of Communications
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Discovering a New Version of Home at HDS

01 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by Caston Lee Benjamin Boyd III in What's It Like at HDS?

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Adjusting, Christianity, Classmates, Community, Friends, Harvard, Religious Pluralism, Student Life

Being human is being comfortable with the uncomfortable.

I remember the first time someone told me I was going to hell (apart from the times in elementary school when my teachers were just fed up with my wisecracking in class). I was an undergrad.

“No way! I can’t go to hell. I believe in Jesus.”

But my antagonists were convinced that I didn’t believe in the right Jesus. “You believe in a false god. Not the one that comes through this church.”  By “this church” they meant their particular denomination, and in many ways they were righMemorialChurch2t: I didn’t believe in the Jesus that they interpreted in their weekly Sunday gatherings. I believed in a Jesus and a Christianity that were broader and more nuanced and more inclusive. How could they reduce a whole Jesus movement to their own particular denomination? What do you call this? Some would label it extremism. I might reach that same conclusion, but I typically imagine an extremist tying me to a chair, locking me up in a room, and forcing me to watch their religious propaganda—like Wednesday, Pugsley, and Joel were indoctrinated with Disney Films in Addam’s Family Values. Thank god that didn’t happen! Fundamentally, I believe my interlocutors felt an unease with something different. They were uncomfortable.

How to be “comfortable.”

Most of my free-spirited liberal friends would say, “Life is a balance.” I agree, wholeheartedly. However, is the balancing act ever comfortable? Think about it. When the Wild Coyote is chasing the Road Runner down a tightrope, does it ever look pleasant for the Coyote? Does it look easy for a gymnast to perform on a balance beam?

I often found myself in sweaty situations where all I could do was fake a smile, and the only place I was able to decompress was in a small, one-window bedroom. In these moments of decompression, I realized something: I was making a home.

I’ve given much thought to this idea of comfort, especially as it relates to balance, and I’ve come to believe that comfortableness is not a human quality. We are always susceptible to forces beyond our control and encroached by evil even in places of peace. Our bodies are degenerative. Our families, traditions, and legacies fade or are replaced, and only a few of us are lucky enough to see three generations. Being human is uncomfortable. Being human is being comfortable with the uncomfortable.

In my time at Harvard Divinity School, I have often been uncomfortable. In the beginning, I thought I would get used to the different personalities, cultures, customs, views, and people, but that never happened. In fact, I became more uncomfortable as time progressed. I often found myself in sweaty situations where all I could do was fake a smile, and the only place I was able to decompress was in a small, one-window bedroom. In these moments of decompression, I realized something: I was making a home.

Homes take different forms. There are the physical spaces we often think of as home. Some find home in a religious tradition. But for me, home is dynamic and ever changing.

Homes take different forms. There are the physical spaces we often think of as home. Some find home in a religious tradition. But for me, home is dynamic and ever changing. It is an uncomfortable place filled with different views, people, cultures, and traditions. I don’t think of a brick-layered building, but a sculptor carving away at a block of stone. It may be incomplete, but always, in a sense, progressing. Not a progression that requires a triumphant end, but one that astonishes you with every new development.

My home is in others’ homes. It may sound bizarre. It may sound like conformity, compromise, or masquerading. But what would it be like to reimagine home? We often think of home as a refuge—a place like no other. This presumes that we are autonomous individuals, each traveling our own path, each in need of a home that consists of seclusion and apartness. In a complex, yet still divided world, I’ve found it helpful to remind myself of the value of encounter.

In a complex, yet still divided world, I’ve found it helpful to remind myself of the value of encounter.

When I first came to HDS, I was tempted to avoid encounters with the different cultures, worldviews, and religions because of unfamiliarity and unease, but after a period of time I grew aware of something happening to me. Disagreements challenged me. Cultures informed me. Traditions awakened me. This development became a consistent reminder that I am a sculpture and the world—my new community—is the sculptor.

I have found that my home is no longer an individual estate or a place of seclusion, but that my home is in others’ homes. It is not the place I retreat to in order to avoid seeing coworkers, tough situations, major events, crisis, and people. It’s the meeting place where the worlds of many become one: everyone unique and yet somehow familiar, collaborating, exchanging, and growing. Home has become a place constantly transformed by the world and life. Not a retreat, but a place of engagement.

Inhabiting the Questions of Religion: Seasons of Light at Harvard Divinity School

14 Monday Dec 2015

Posted by David Waters in Student Life

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Classmates, Community, Diversity, Events, Friends, Harvard, Religious Pluralism, Student Life

What does it mean to pursue the study of religion at a place that isn’t aligned with a particular religious tradition? What does it look like when you engage in this study with students from six continents and more than 35 different religious traditions—plus some who have no particular religious affiliation at all? Seasons of Light, our annual multireligious celebration, is part of the answer. The order of celebration for Seasons of Light situates the celebration in the context of our community:

As the nights lengthen and the darkness grows in the Northern Hemisphere, the Great Wheel of the calendar turns once again, catching us up in its low descent. Together we inhabit the promise of holy darkness and anticipate the light’s return. Many religious traditions honor this sacred interplay of day and night in their respective holy days and seasons; most also observe periods of fasting and feasting, often coinciding with a region’s agricultural rhythms of seedtime and harvest. Tonight, we gather to honor the mystery of the swelling darkness around us by kindling the flames of several traditions represented in the HDS community.

Here, I’ve been able to join that concern for literature with an exploration of religion and culture in an attempt to reach for the divine: that ineffable extraordinary which has sparked our imaginations and given shape to our aspirations from the very beginning.

I’d been looking forward to this celebration for weeks. One of my favorite parts of studying at HDS has been the infusion of that study with a sense of sacred purpose. I came to HDS from a small school in southern Maryland where I was awakened to some of the deeper questions that we attempt to answer with the study of literature. Here, I’ve been able to join that concern for literature with an exploration of religion and culture in an attempt to reach for the divine: that ineffable extraordinary which has sparked our imaginations and given shape to our aspirations from the very beginning.

Doing all this in a space that’s at once deeply concerned with religion and religious practice, yet not itself religious, means asking a whole series of fascinating questions—questions that echo throughout the field of religious studies. Can we study religion from within a religious practice or identity? Must we attempt to get “outside” of religion to view it objectively? Is that objectivity even possible? If we feel passionately about religion, how do we express that passion?

Walking into Andover Chapel last week provided some of those answers. Students, staff, and faculty had been gathered in Rockefeller Café before the ceremony for our last Community Tea. Mixing and mingling around tables filled with all kinds of delectable treats, we took a moment from the hustle and bustle of the end of the semester to simply be with each other. To catch up, trade stories, commiserate over the interminable stream of papers, and to share in that measure of comfort that comes from knowing that we’re in it together.

It’s one thing to read about different traditions, but it’s another to have them made tangible: here was a symbol of faith, being illuminated by my classmate whom I’d spent the semester learning and talking and eating with.

Afterward, in the Chapel, the warmth we felt in the Café was manifest in the candles flickering at the entrance. In the middle of the chapel stood a simple altar with the symbols of the many faith traditions represented here at HDS: a seated Buddha, a hanukkiya, the Ikh Omkar of the Sikh tradition, Unitarian Universalism’s flaming chalice, an Advent wreath, and many more. As we gathered, students from each of these traditions made their way to the table to light the candles of their respective faiths. As I watched my fellow students light their candles, I turned to my order of celebration to read about the signs and symbols that I didn’t recognize. It’s one thing to read about different traditions, but it’s another to have them made tangible: here was a symbol of faith, being illuminated by my classmate whom I’d spent the semester learning and talking and eating with. In this moment, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and the Johrei tradition were not abstractions or exotic “others,” but the embodied faiths of people with whom I share a common community. There was the Advent wreath of my Christian faith alongside the Yule Log of Paganism, the Villakku/Diya of Hinduism, and the Arabic Plaque of Islam.

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As the evening proceeded, we sang songs, listened to readings from different traditions, and students and faculty from different traditions performed anthems, chants, and music from their respective faiths. Singing the Hebrew of “Hineh mah tov” in the round brought tears to my eyes: “Hineh mah tov umah nayim, shevet achim gam yachad!” Behold what a good and joyful thing it is, when people live together in unity.

We approach this study of the sacred each from our own various locations and identities, sometimes shaped by a religious conviction of our own, sometimes not.

Here’s the thing about HDS, the study of religion, and our nonsectarian space: One of the things we understand here is that there’s no “outside” space from which we can observe and report on religion “objectively.” We approach this study of the sacred each from our own various locations and identities, sometimes shaped by a religious conviction of our own, sometimes not. In her address “Where We Do Stand,” Janet Gyatso, our Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies, invites us to consider “Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s insistence that we must be friends with the people whose religions we study, we must come to know, as he says, ‘those qualities of the believer’s life that can only be known in that personal two-way relationship known as friendship.’” This leads us toward the “ability to abide with other people’s religion—not just to study it but also to inculcate ourselves in a common space so as to inhabit the questions of religion together.”

This is what we do here at HDS. This is the beauty and the magic of Seasons of Light: that it allows us to inhabit the questions of religion together, as friends.

The Billings Preaching Competition

31 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by Sarah Lord in Student Life

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Academics, Billings Preaching, MDiv, Ministry, Religious Pluralism

The annual Billings Preaching Competition is a long-standing tradition at Harvard Divinity School. Every spring, second and third year Master of Divinity students have the opportunity to preach from a text, and on a topic, of their choice from the historic pulpit in Emerson Chapel. From those who enter, one is chosen to receive the Massachusetts Bible Society award for the best reading of a scripture, and four finalists are chosen to preach to the larger HDS community in Andover Chapel. Continue reading →

Multireligious Service

16 Monday Jun 2014

Posted by Aisha Ansano in Graduating

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Classmates, Community, Diversity, Friends, Religious Pluralism, Spirituality

Over the entire course of my first year at HDS, I would say that the Multireligious Service of Thanksgiving was the event that captured HDS in a nutshell. Yes, the invocations, readings, and benedictions from varied religious and spiritual traditions contributed to that feel of HDS—a reading from the Lotus Sutra followed immediately by one from the Qur’an, a benediction from the Humanist tradition followed by a prayer by Thomas Merton. HDS is a place where people of multiple traditions not only exist alongside each other, but also interact with one another on a regular basis. But those varied readings alone were not what made the service seem exquisitely HDS. It was also many other, perhaps less obvious things—like the streamers. Continue reading →

Stellar & Down to Earth Faculty

09 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by Chris Alburger in What's It Like at HDS?

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Christianity, Classes, CSWR, Faculty, Religion & Politics, Religious Pluralism, Theology, UU

The Harvard Divinity School shield. Photo by Chris Alburger

The Harvard Divinity School shield at Harvard COOP. Photo by Chris Alburger

When I visited HDS as a prospective student, I was surprised by what Dr. Emily Click said from the podium. I’d brought some assumptions with me, across the country to Cambridge. I mean, it was Harvard. I figured they’d be snobby. Especially the faculty, with all their accomplishments and accolades. But Emily Click emanated warmth, her words were heartfelt, and she was so down to earth, I thought, wow, this is like my small liberal arts college, but even more so: nurturing, holistic, inspiring. Continue reading →

The MDiv Program

11 Tuesday Mar 2014

Posted by Chris Alburger in Academics

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Aspirations, Christianity, Classes, Faith, Field Ed, Humanist, Interfaith, Jewish, MDiv, Ministry, Muslim, Pagan, Religious Pluralism, Theology

My book shelf. Photo by Chris Alburger

My book shelf. Photo by Chris Alburger

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Diversity and Explorations 2012: A Reflection

01 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by Caston Lee Benjamin Boyd III in Applying

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Academics, Buddhism, Christianity, Diversity, DivEx, Fit, Interfaith, LGBT, Muslim, Religious Pluralism

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November at HDS. Photo by Chris Alburger

Major vocations, careers, and life callings are antecedents of a secondary or inconsequential, but illuminating moment in one’s existence. If I could express this concept more thoroughly, I would say it is similar to attending a well-organized Nutcracker performance, based on the 1891 production by Tchaikovsky, and imagining yourself as a ballerina/ballerino; and assessing the complexities (I have no plans in this vocation, by the way). For me, Diversity and Explorations (DivEx) served that, and more. At DivEx I envisioned my role at Harvard Divinity, made relationships, and critically observed Harvard Divinity. Along with all the free goodies that went with being a participant, DivEx served as an enlightening moment for my subsequent decision, and my life at HDS now. Continue reading →

Saying What You Mean

31 Wednesday Jul 2013

Posted by Pete Williamson in Student Life

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Clubs, Conservative Theology, Diversity, Evangelical, Humanist, Orientation, Religious Pluralism, Theology

I sat across from him in the pub during orientation week. It was one of the pub-nights organized for us to make friends or something. Of the infinite threads of social conversation, of course I, being an overzealous new Divinity School student, wanted to talk about religion. “I think,” I explained, “that I see the Bible like a series of expanding concentric circles centered on Jesus.” He didn’t know what I meant. I didn’t know what I meant. What I was trying to say was that I seek to believe the Bible with the most ‘plain sense’ reading I could and follow it accordingly. I just wanted to say it in a way that didn’t make me sound stupid.

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