An Interfaith Community

The DePauw Community is an Interfaith Community.

The Center for Spiritual Life is your resource for blessings, sanctuary, meaning-making and mischief making. We love this image of Dr. Martin Luther King preaching here at Gobin Church on September 5th, 1960-geographically and spiritually, right in the center of campus. The prophetic, counter-cultural spirituality Dr. King represents stands as an ongoing witness of why spirituality is so crucial to campus life.

Spirituality is naturally at the center of university life, quite simply because it is inevitably at the center of each of us. Spirituality is the connection between things. Whatever it is that you believe or don't believe about religion, God, life, death, and the big questions, everybody has a spirituality-because all of us are on an ongoing journey to make meaning out of our lives, to connect our individual stories to a larger story.

The Center for Spiritual Life doesn't try to offer easy answers to our most complex questions, but rather offers space to hold ambiguity and tension, both knowing and unknowing. At the center, our goal is Not to deny your particularity, but to deepen it; not to sustain the world as it is, but to subvert it; not to dictate your journey, but make space for it; not to offer platitudes, but offer blessings.

We hope you will consider joining one of our many practice-based communities to explore your own faith practice more deeply, whether that is through our spiritual student organizations (like Dharma, Muslim Student Association, Hillel, our Buddhist Club) or Christian ministry affiliates (like Tiger Catholic, Young Life, Inter Varsity), or through ongoing spiritual life opportunities like our weekly yoga classes at Bartlett Reflection Center, or our new DePauw Christian Chapel. Spaces for prayer, meditation and reflection within each of our great spiritual traditions is available at the physical space of the Center for Spiritual Life, while our Bartlett Reflection Center and Gobin Church also are open and available for you to cultivate contemplation and wonder. Our annual Mendenhall Lecture is an especially significant time for our entire community, during which we bring in special guests who challenge us to think critically about how our spirituality informs how we live in the world.

To connect with us, feel free to drop by CSL (411 E. Seminary St., swipe access bam-midnight daily), or if you would like to have the support of a chaplain on your journey (always confidential!), contact Chaplain Jonathan Martin at jonathanmartinedepauw.edu or 765.658.6768). Whatever it is you believe, we at the Center for Spiritual Life believe in you and the journey you are walking, and are here to walk alongside you.