CAMPUS
INTERFAITH SPACES AND CONVERSATIONS
TRANSLATING IDEALS OF RELIGIOUS PLURALISM INTO COMMUNITY
By Hanna Bregman and Eloise Vaughan Williams
I
n many ways, Tufts students have come to appreciate the diverse and vibrant opportunities for exploring questions of spirituality and building faith-based communities. The Interfaith Center, with its large windows that invite sunlight into its neutrally-colored interiors, is the product of a concerted effort by Tufts University to create a space that functions as a hub for community meetings, spiritual curiosity, and the sharing of ideas. This building is the physical manifestation of longstanding ideals of civic engagement and religious pluralism at Tufts. This tradition spawned Conversation Action Faith and Communication (CAFE), a Pre-Orientation program that offers an opportunity for students to engage with these ideals at the very beginning of their time at Tufts. Community of Faith Exploration and Engagement (COFFEE), a year round extension of CAFE, encourages students to continue their engagement once their lives at Tufts are underway. Freshman Romy Arie, the student affairs coordinator for COFFEE, said
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that she was drawn to CAFE due to “the community organizing aspect. I think a lot of people don’t realize that a really big goal of CAFE is to learn about community organizing… It’s not necessarily a faith [centered] Pre-O.” The intersection between faith and community engagement is not new to Tufts. In Senior John Lazur’s directed research project that seeks to explore the evolution of faith and spirituality at Tufts, they found that the university has been interested in ideals of religious pluralism since its founding. Admittedly, “Tufts was founded as a Universalist institution by Universalists, and in a lot of senses, for Universalists. But, also, when it was founded as a college there was an immediate commitment to a nonsectarian education,” said Lazur. “This immediate commitment to nonsectarian education— if not secular education—[ran] in counter to other colleges and universities, especially in New England,” they continued. Lazur’s research expounds on Tufts’ commitment to social engagement as intertwined with the religious identities of its students. Crane Theological School, Tufts’ divinity school, opened in 1869 and closed a century later. The school “always struggled financially, it always struggled
