campusreview. com. au
ON CAMPUS
Faith in universities
How campuses are responding to the increasing diversity of religion and spirituality among students.
By Joanna Thyer
The faith landscape in Australia is changing – not just among the general population, but also among university students.
Today more than ever, diversity is the rule across Australian campuses. With students coming from all quarters of the globe to study in Australian universities, the mix of students from different countries and cultures is profound: Muslims, Hindus, Orthodox( Russian, Coptic, Serbian), Buddhists and others. The diversity is markedly different from the university landscape of 20 years ago.
This mix provides an interesting dynamic for cultural and religious interaction among different groups. Chaplaincy departments in universities across Australia have needed to respond to this mix and encourage interaction and multi-faith / inter-faith participation, as well as discussion on matters of faith, ethics, spirituality, international affairs and society generally, via panels and forums on campus.
This has presented some challenges but also encouraged a learning trajectory between students of different faiths and cultures. Within religious traditions themselves, there is enormous diversity in terms of how faith is interpreted and the different values shared. Among the major Abrahamic faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – this particularly applies in relation to LGBTI issues, national identity, attitudes towards international conflicts, and so on. The conflicts in the Middle East in particular rate highly among the concerns of many international students. Intertwined with this changing faith landscape on Australian campuses is the growing number of‘ no religion’ and‘ spiritual but not religious’ groups.
The 2016 census highlighted that nearly a third of Australians have‘ no religion’, while the percentage of Christians has dropped to around half. However, the‘ spiritual but not religious’ group, atheism, and religions such as Hinduism and Islam, and to a lesser extent Buddhism, are growing in the general community. This manifestation also appears to filter through to university campuses. We are definitely ethnically diverse but less religious.
Looking at multi-faith expression across campuses, the ABC Radio show God Forbid interviewed me in October about the future of faith. While, as the ABC points out, evangelicals may be the largest Christian group on campuses, the landscape is changing, and more and more people across a variety of faiths, and those with no faith, are seeking a spiritual life, and not necessarily along conventional lines.
While the major religions will always offer the traditional forms of worship – masses, bible study, daily prayers and so on – there will also be those looking for more varied forms of prayer, meditation or simply‘ quiet time’.
With the popularity of mindfulness meditation now, many campuses offer regular meditation sessions. Many of these are secular even if conducted by a chaplain of a particular faith.
Meditation can be practised by believers and non-believers, and yet it is also historically part of all the major faith traditions. Hindu, Buddhist, Hare Krishna, Catholic and Christian chaplains often preside at meditations both in their own tradition and in a secular‘ mindfulness’ way. General prayer and meditation is particularly‘ user friendly’ across all faith and cultural groups.
University can be a challenging and confronting environment for some students. They face a landscape where technology is changing at an extraordinary speed, where permanent full-time work is less and less the norm, where there is much religious intolerance and suspicion of organised religion in the general community, and the presence of populism and religious fundamentalism on the global sphere. These factors combined with professional and economic insecurity can place stresses on them academically, mentally, spiritually and emotionally.
There will always be those who seek meaning in their current circumstances, a desire for something‘ more than’, amid the social realities of job insecurity, housing difficulties and so on.
University multi-faith chaplaincy services usually have a variety of chaplains from different faiths offering pastoral care to students( emotional and spiritual support), and are able to not only encourage appreciation among students of the unity amid the diversity, but also help encourage and ground them, so they can better face the future uncertainties of a changing world. ■
Joanna Thyer is the multi-faith chaplaincy coordinator at the University of Technology Sydney.
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