The Pluralism Project at Harvard University

Our Lady of the Cedars Lebanon Church

Annunciation Melkite-Greek Catholic Cathedral

St. Mary's Orthodox Church

Faith Lutheran Church in Cambridge celebrates anniversary

Faith Lutheran Church in Cambridge celebrates the 100th anniversary of its building, dedicated in 1909. Like Cambridge itself, Faith Lutheran Church has undergone many changes in the last 100 years. Today, they share their building with the Calvary Praise and Worship Center and the Medhanialem Eritrean Christian Fellowship.

Sacred Space—Practices and Potentials

A local comparative campus study

Research by Laine Walters
The Pluralism Project, Harvard University

In addition to their academic aspirations, students from immigrant backgrounds bring the diversity of their spiritual beliefs, ethical mores and religious practices to colleges and universities across the country.

New immigration laws in 1965 fundamentally changed the demographics of America and also its student population. In the 1990s, numbers of religious minorities had grown to such a level that many colleges and universities underwent a multi-religious transformation of their traditional "campus ministries." They worked to design ways to reach out to the spiritual needs of their Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, and Buddhist students and to reduce the prominence of a long-established Christian focus. In many cases, this involved hiring a diverse board of chaplains, but it has also required a rethinking of "Sacred Space." Some schools like the Massachusetts Institute for Technology had attracted a diverse student population so long ago that the MIT Chapel, built in 1955, was designed as interfaith from the very start. Its minimalist design highlights natural elements of water and light, but the chapel itself is very bare. Other schools have had the opportunity to design or build interfaith sacred spaces from the ground up because of campus expansions, grants, or in the case of Northeastern University, an "act of God," like the fire that struck in 1992. Northeastern’s Sacred Space has won numerous architectural awards for its luminous design. A second fire has closed the Sacred Space to the public until September 2006.

Still other schools must "make do" with existing spaces which are heavily Christian in architecture. Harvard Divinity School, founded in 1816 as a school solely designed to train Christian ministers (although non-sectarian in its curriculum), now has one of the most diverse student bodies at any divinity school in the country. Andover Chapel, HDS’s main sacred space, has intricately detailed wood choir pews and railings and Christian stained glass windows above a prominent altar space. The HDS chaplain spends considerable time discussing how the space, through seating design, decoration or other elements, can be made more accommodating to each faith group that holds religious services there.

Interfaith space on university campuses is itself a test of America’s religious pluralism. Is religious space accommodating of all students? Do students feel a need to worship in separate places? Does worshipping "under one roof" lead to interfaith engagement, or do the facilities act more like time-shares? The slide show features five Boston-area colleges and universities, details of their campus spiritual life, and the sacred spaces where students of diverse backgrounds encounter the divine.

World Religions in Greater Boston - The Boston Bahá’í Center

The Boston Bahá’í Center

JCM for Profile

The Saints of Boston: Icons of Eastern Christian Churches in Greater Boston

Eastern Christians believe the Incarnation of the Son of God revealed to all humanity the image of the Father. Through taking human form the entire material world was made holy, the cosmos transfigured. Saints are thought to achieve deification in their lifetimes through the emulation of Christ, fulfilling the role of humanity as created in the image of God.  Icons—which in Greek translates as image, likeness, or portrait—are thus images of the images of God. The following slide show features the altars and namesake icons of various Eastern Christian churches of Boston.

Eastern Orthodox Churches Celebrate Anniversaries

Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral of Boston and St. Mary’s Antiochian Orthodox Church of Cambridge recently held events commemorating their respective 100^th  and 80^th anniversaries. Immigrants from the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires founded the Holy Trinity Cathedral in 1910; immigrants from Syria and Lebanon founded St. Mary’s in 1928. Early twentieth-century Boston saw waves of immigration from the Middle East, and North and South Eastern Europe and thus many Eastern Orthodox Churches in the area were founded in this period (St. George’s Albanian Orthodox Cathedral of South Boston celebrated its centennial in 2008, Annunciation Greek Orthodox Cathedral of New England celebrated its centennial in 2003). Throughout their long history, Holy Trinity and St. Mary’s have continued the tradition of their Slavic and Antiochian strands of Eastern Orthodoxy, but they have both grown into congregations of diverse ethnic backgrounds, including Eritrean, Latino, and Chinese members. Converts to Orthodoxy also comprise a large portion of their membership. The following slide show displays pictures from Holy Trinity and St. Mary’s respective celebratory events. 

Serbian Orthodox Church Consecrates Church in Cambridge

With the arrival of a new iconostasis, or icon screen, October 10 and 11, 2009, marked the Great Consecration of St. Sava’s Serbian Orthodox Church in Cambridge. At the sermon given at the consecration His Eminence Metropolitan Nikolaj of Dabrobosanska, Metropolitanate in Bosnia, exclaimed: “The Church invites us to grasp that it is not a closed community of the saved...but it is a holy liturgical community of the faithful, which acknowledges and glorifies the experience of Christ's suffering, death and resurrection, the victory over death. And with this we enliven and transfigure all, the entire universe, in freedom and love. Therefore, our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ does not close us in ourselves, in our circles, in our country, in our local Church, but invites us to celebrate all and everything with hope and love.” The following slide show presents images from this event.