Hindu College Chaplains and Faith Development Frameworks

Scholars of chaplaincy have often turned to faith development theories to help make sense of the role that college chaplains play in the spiritual lives of the emerging adults they work with. By and large, however, such study has engaged almost exclusively with chaplains and students identified with white Protestant Christian traditions–perhaps unwittingly reinforcing white Christian hegemony within the field. Even where attempts have been made to examine college chaplaincy in more diverse contexts, scholars have often limited their research to Jewish, Christian, and Muslim experiences (the so-called Abrahamic faiths). Concurrently, although recent scholarship (Shipman, 2020; Chander and Mosher, 2019) has started to examine the development of formalized higher education chaplaincy within the Hindu-American community, it has not tended to do so through the lens of faith development.

In the proposed paper, I seek to fill this gap by examining the relationship between Hindu college chaplains and the students they serve through the lens of three models of faith development: one arising from a study of post-9/11 Muslim-American students (Peek, 2005); a second that builds on the seminal work of James Fowler (1981) and is largely based on research conducted with Christian students (Parks, 2019); and a third that borrows from a Vedantic Hindu framework (Gosvamin, 2003) that I seek to re-interpret and apply to emerging adulthood here.

Drawing from my doctoral research chronicling a history of organized Hindu student life in higher education, and my lived experience as a Hindu college chaplain, I seek to juxtapose the stories of the Hindu student /chaplain relationship with these three faith development models. 

For instance, in her study of post-9/11 American Muslim undergraduate students, Lori Peek (2005) suggests that three discernible stages mark the development of faith identity for these students. Muslim young adults conceptualize their Muslim-ness first as an ascribed or inherited identity, then as chosen private identity, and finally as declared public identity. (Peek, 2005) The proposed paper seeks to identify sites of resonance and divergence from this experience when it comes to the reported experiences of Hindu students. 

Likewise, the invaluable work of Sharon Daloz Parks (2019) in examining the formative years that typically correspond to college attendance as a time of emerging adulthood illuminates a movement from conventional and unquestioned faith to faith that is more diffuse and marked by the forming of one’s own convictions and commitments. Do Hindu-American student experiences reflect this same trajectory? Might Hindu chaplains serve as the “mentoring communities” for these students in the way that Parks (2019) suggests is key? 

I also turn to a framework of faith development that arises from a prominent school of Vedanta within Hinduism, first codified by the 16th century theologian Rupa Gosvamin (1489-1564). I suggest that (with some adaptation) this framework might serve as an indigenous Hindu model of faith development for emerging adults that can complement but also challenge those offered by Peek and Parks. 

In choosing to examine Hindu chaplaincy in particular, this paper aims to accomplish two broader goals. First, it seeks to shed light on an under-studied, marginalized, and minoritized religious community within our field. Secondly, it also suggests the possibility of lessons that might be applicable to our evolving understanding of chaplaincy more generally.