Office of Chaplains and Religious Life celebrates 70th anniversary

BY SARAH ONDERDONK SENIOR STAFF WRITER

This year marks the University’s Office of the Chaplains and Religious Life’s 70th year of operation, according to Reverend Janet Cooper Nelson, the chaplain of the University and director of the Office. The Office has a number of plans as it looks ahead to its 75th anniversary, Cooper Nelson added.

OCRL’s history

According to the University’s website, the OCRL “seeks to create spaces and opportunities within” the University community where “profound questions” can be “voiced and explored openly, whether these concerns originate within religious, philosophical, ethical or spiritual practice.”

The work of the University’s chaplains is “rooted in the care of the whole person” and seeks to “increase religious literacy” and support “religious diversity.”

According to Cooper Nelson, the University’s religious history is “kind of a hidden story.”

Arthur L. Washburn was the first to hold the title of chaplain at the University, according to an article from the Encyclopedia Brunoniana. Washburn had been acting as a chaplain for years by the time he was officially named chaplain in 1942 — he regularly attended religious services, visited sick students in the infirmary every day and had been living amongst students in a dormitory, the article states.

The Office of the Chaplain was officially established in 1952, but it was not up and running until 1953, according to Cooper Nelson. The first official University chaplain to preside over the office was Edgar C. Reckard, a Presbyterian minister and professor of religious studies. Reckard was succeeded in 1958 by Charles A. Baldwin, who remained in the role until Cooper Nelson was appointed in 1990. Nelson was ordained in the United Church of Christ and her appointment made her the first woman to head an Ivy League university chaplain’s office.

With the 1959 end of compulsory chapel attendance for students, Manning Chapel, housed on the second floor of Manning Hall, became a place where all religious groups could worship. Baldwin conducted Protestant services while local religious leaders acted as chaplains for other faiths. Now, there are full-time chaplains available for a number of religious groups.

“The Chaplain of the University was a solo operation for a long time,” Cooper Nelson said. “In 1996, we began a full review of the program and came up with the design that it holds now.” Currently, the OCRL has associate chaplain positions for the University’s Muslim, Protestant, Catholic and Jewish communities, although the last position is temporarily vacant.

Upcoming plans

Cooper Nelson said that the Office is interested in establishing chaplain positions for the University’s Hindu and Buddhist communities. She added that the Office has wanted to create these positions for a while but lacks funding.

Cooper Nelson is also focused on renovating Manning Chapel over the next five years.

“Our Muslim community does not have a proper place to pray,” she said, “The lower floor of Manning Hall … could make a really great prayer space for the Muslim community as well as our meditation community.”

The state of their prayer space is “really unfortunate because we have no natural lighting and have been flooded on multiple occasions,” Brown Muslim Students’ Association

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Design Chair Shazain Khan ’24 previously told The Herald.

Cooper Nelson, above all, hopes to increase the visibility of the OCRL on campus.

Imam Amir Toft, associate chaplain of the University for the Muslim community, expressed a similar sentiment, adding that visibility helps the Office better serve University community members.

“As the university gets bigger, and as campus life gets bigger, it’s easy to sometimes lose visibility to the students, faculty and staff that we’re here to support and serve,” Toft said.

In an email to The Herald, Associate Chaplain of the University for the Catholic Community Edmund McCullough wrote that “religion is an important and ineradicable element of the human experience.”

“Since Brown aims at … understanding and ameliorating the human condition, it ought to be able to understand and to respect religious

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Coaching for a Change Info Session

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Career Lab, 1st floor Event Space

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Warren Alpert Medical School commitment,” he added.

Cooper Nelson said that she hopes to garner stronger support for several OCRL programs over the next few years, such as Thursday night interfaith suppers and various support groups for community members.

Not only does Cooper Nelson hope to continue supporting and supplementing these long-standing programs, but she is also determined to promote the new spiritual life residential community that will be housed in the Brook Street residence halls and better support the University’s South Asian religious communities.

“This work includes how you eat in the dining hall and what kind of prayer spaces we have,” she said. “It’s important because you could be part of a very large tradition or you could be part of a very small one, and every single person matters.”

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Pizzitola Memorial Sports Center spring show was particularly notable for IMPULSE because it highlighted the group’s dedication to community engagement through its very composition.

“This year’s show proved just how diverse our company can be,” she said.

According to Ming-May Hu ’23, one of the co-directors for “RUCKUS,” building community is what the company does best. For this year’s performance, Hu choreographed a joint dance piece with Fusion.

“I loved getting to combine my love for two different companies and bring the communities together,” she said. “One of the best things about IMPULSE is that, in the end, we are all united by our love for dance and each other and want to share that.”

For Arielle Martinez Cohen ’23.5, co-director of the show, “RUCKUS” was “truly the highlight of my Brown experience.”

“I’m so in awe of how talented everyone is in dancing and choreographing,” she said. “Sometimes I’ll watch a dance and start fangirling over everyone and then realize I actually get to dance with them.”

Hu expressed a similar sentiment, adding that it was “really rewarding to perform with some of my favorite people and put on an amazing show for the audience.”

“As a freshman, I never thought that I would become co-director,” she said. “This group has helped me gain so much confidence and grow as a dancer and a person, especially in the last year.” tunities are imperative to the organization’s mission of uplifting Latinx students who are considering legal careers.

“We are so happy with how the show turned out and can’t wait to do it again next year,” Martinez Cohen said.

“Especially as Latine students and students of color at a predominantly white institution, we need to be uplifting each other and supporting each other in every way that we can,” she said. This way, “more of us can go into this profession and into this industry (and) open up more opportunities for other Latine students in the future.”

Joel Gonzalez ’25 said that the group allows students with shared cultural backgrounds to connect and discuss their identities and passions.

“It was a safe space for us to talk about our demographic background,” Gonzalez said. “The majority of us are coming from immigrant backgrounds, and the things we want to fix are mainly immigrant reform and other (related) issues.”

Antunez Lopez emphasized the importance of representation in empowering Latinx students to excel in any career they may choose to pursue. “History is due for another Latinx movement in America,” he said. And “change happens on college campuses, especially one like this.”

But despite “really big plans” for La Alianza, Antunez Lopez acknowledged that the organization “has to start off small.”

“We’re trying to learn and gain lots of experience so that we can really launch” into the campus community, he said.

Members hope La Alianza can act as “a model organization to start opening up more inclusive organizations for Latinx students on campus,” Gonzalez said. “It’s revolutionary.”