Dear Friends of the Office of the University Chaplain and Religious Life:

The month of February, which we celebrate as Black History Month, is rife with learning and engagement opportunities mediated through the OUCRL, our Interfaith Council, our affiliated and student ministries, our residential colleges and countless other campus partners. We are challenged, this month and always, to be simultaneously courageous and vulnerable, since the former does not negate the latter but, instead, requires that we all risk disclosing our human ignorance, bias, arrogance and limited worldviews that stand in the way of a more holistic (dare I say holy?) way of life that yearns for justice and peace.

The OUCRL, along with many lead sponsors (see below), has ramped up through the month of January and will sustain the Black History Month emphasis into April through the series, The Civil Rights Movement in Nashville and Beyond: Listening to the Past, Imagining the Future. Please come to these future events which are free and open to the public.

On February 9, the OUCRL’s Project Dialogue, joining hands with many of our evangelical Christian partners, brought the Veritas Forum to Vanderbilt again. The Veritas Forum is a national organization that articulates its purpose in this way:

“Where does our name come from? Many of our nation’s colleges and universities, including Yale, Michigan and Harvard, have included the Latin word veritas in their mottos, signifying the pursuit of truth, a pursuit that was the foundation for much of the educational system for generations. Our name, the Veritas Forum, evokes our desire to explore the ideal that veritas represents. We seek to explore, discuss, engage, inspire, question, and enlarge our view of true life together.” (From the VF mission statement).

To a very full Benton Chapel, the VF brought John Inazu, law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, and Sabrine Rhodes, a national racial and cultural diversity consultant, who were interviewed under the question: Race and Justice: What Difference Does God Make?

From Feb. 8-14, the Muslim Student Association collaborated with the OUCRL, the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center, The Martha Rivers Ingram Commons, the Wesley Fellowship and our Inclusivity Initiatives and Cultural Competence office to put on a five-part Islamic Awareness Week (see poster below). From offering a brilliant “Islam 101” tutorial by Rashed Fakhruddin, Vanderbilt alumnus and president of the Islamic Center of Nashville, to a dinner discussion at the home of the dean of The Ingram Commons, to a scholarly presentation and large dinner conversation on Islamophobia in the West in the Student Life Center ballroom, the MSA helped broaden and deepen our understanding of the intersectionality between race, religion and culture. This served our mission to include, affirm and connect with others who live beyond our familiar sense of the world to a more real and vibrant knowledge of the world unfolding before our eyes.

Blessings,

Rev. Mark Forrester
University Chaplain and Director of Religious Life