At the intersection of Scripps College, Pomona College and Claremont McKenna College stands the McAlister Center for Religious Activities (also called the McAlister Center for Spiritual Life), an institution many students pass by every day. However, according to former Protestant Chaplain Naima Lett, 75 percent of the community she encountered during the 2021-2022 school year was unaware of the center’s chaplain services, which provide counseling for all students and faculty of the Claremont Colleges regardless of religion. Even less known is the chaplaincy system’s fifty years of complex history, representing both the cutting edge of inclusive college campuses and archaic systems no longer relevant to student needs.
Origins of the interfaith chaplaincy model
The McAlister Center for Religious Activities opened in 1959 as a hub for students of all religions to hold activities. However, a Protestant minister was the only clergyperson on the consortium’s payroll providing on-campus religious services.
By 1971, Chaplain Gordon Verplank PO ’62, the fifth minister to hold the campus chaplain position, realized that his expertise wasn’t sufficient to serve all student religious needs on campus. Verplank began enlisting the help of a Jewish rabbi, a Jewish activities coordinator and a Catholic priest, according to Pomona College Chair of the Faculty Ken Wolf’s “A Brief History of the Claremont Chaplaincy.”
This interfaith partnership led Verplank to write a proposal in 1972 asking for the rabbi and priest to receive equal status to himself as co-chaplains of the colleges. This proposal raised budgetary concerns, but local Jewish organizations such as the Jewish Community Federation and Hillel (In Wolf’s history and the Interfaith Chaplaincy 10th anniversary pamphlet, it is not clear whether this is a Claremont Colleges specific Hillel, a regional group or national group) stepped up to help pay the rabbi and the Archdiocese of Los Angeles helped pay and house the priest. Verplank’s assistant chaplain also agreed to resign, while Verplank agreed to reduce his salary to help pay the other two chaplains, according to Wolf’s history and E. Howard Brooks’s statement at the interfaith chaplaincy’s 10th anniversary celebration in 1985.
By summer 1973, Verplank’s proposal was actualized. Some brochures on the interfaith chaplaincy from the 1980s name 1974 as the start date rather than 1973, perhaps indicating that some services took a few months to become fully functional.
Wolf’s history indicates that giving faith leaders of three different religions coequal roles in a college chaplaincy was an unprecedented move for the early 1970s. As far as both Wolf and Verplank were concerned, the interfaith chaplaincy in Claremont was the only program of its kind in the entire U.S. at its inception.
Moving into the 21st century, however, the chaplaincy’s structure struggled to support an ever-increasing range of student religious beliefs.
Early evolutions of interfaith programming
Aside from some more conservative figures objecting to the Rabbi receiving equal status at McAlister with Catholic and Protestant clergy, the new chaplaincy model was generally well received at its onset in the 1970s.
Throughout this first decade, the three chaplains collectively sponsored various activities: extracurricular classes on a variety of religious and philosophical subjects, movie screening study breaks, a talent show and speaker talks with Chaim Potok and Elie Wiesel, among some of the most notable. Each chaplain also provided religious services from their respective tradition at least once a week, according to brochures.
By 1975, Latter-day Saints, Baha’i and Christian Science student groups began meeting independently of the chaplains. Muslim meetings appeared in chaplaincy pamphlets by 1980 — albeit with the potentially inaccurate designation “Islam Worship,” which was changed to a more precise “Islamic Prayer” in 1982. Meanwhile, an Eastern Orthodox group became active on campus in 1985.
In the early 1980s, the chaplains also sponsored weekly forums on religious and political issues. These forums included religious topics such as “Saint Francis: A Saint for the 80s” and “Understanding Judaism: The Nature of Jewish Spirituality” alongside more secular topics like “Campus Relationships: Making Them Work” and “The Films and Television Shows of the 80s: What are They Saying?” These programs often featured 5C faculty members or consortium staff members such as Dr. Karem J. Monsour, former director of counseling at the Claremont Colleges and namesake of Monsour Counseling and Psychological Services.
In addition to these forums, chaplains worked with faculty while leading religious services and teaching classes. A “courses of Jewish Interest” list from a mid-1970s Hillel pamphlet indicates that chaplains Fr. Frank Meskill, Rev. Gordon Verplank and Rabbi Ben Beliak co-taught an Introduction to Religious Thought course at CMC alongside a religious studies faculty member.
In 1986, CMC philosophy professor and Presbyterian minister Steve Davis preached at a start-of-semester college Protestant church meeting sponsored by the chaplaincy. Additionally, Pomona physics professor and ordained priest Catalin Mitescu helped start Eastern Orthodox activity on campus. Rabbi Beliak also wrote multiple letters encouraging Jewish faculty to make themselves known to Jewish students by attending chaplaincy-sponsored lecture events and High Holy Day services.
Major budget cuts impacted the chaplaincy services in 1993, but much of its programming — such as weekday and Sunday masses, Friday evening Shabbat services, Bible studies and Torah studies — appeared to remain relatively unchanged based on the chaplaincy brochures from 1992, 1994 and 1998 archived at Honnold Mudd Library’s special collections.
Starting in the late 1980s and gaining particular momentum in the 1990s, chaplains also connected students with local off-campus volunteer opportunities. An advertisement-like insert from the 1989-1990 chaplains’ report called for students to volunteer at local senior homes, Pomona Valley Council of Churches shelter and food pantry, Casa Colina physical therapy program, the Crippled Children’s Society, SOVA East-Hillel food pantry and as tutors and coaches at the Claremont Unified School District. The chaplains’ office had lists of students who participated in various volunteer activities each semester throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.
Limits on inclusivity: Religions outside of chaplains’ traditions and students of color
Despite the growth, there were limited attempts to include traditions other than Judaism and Christianity in the chaplaincy programming. The chaplains made some efforts to include speakers outside of their specific religious and cultural traditions in their event programming, as the “Open College” extracurricular classes offered in 1975 included classes on the Baha’i faith, “biofeedback” and pre-Christian Greek philosophy. Meanwhile, in 1989, they co-sponsored a conversation with Dr. Lina Gupte, a Claremont Graduate School alumna and professor of Asian and comparative philosophy at California State University Long Beach, on peace and justice in the Hindu tradition.
They did not, however, appear to be involved in Nara University Professor Masao Abe’s 1976 talk on Shinto and Buddhism in Japan or the Dalai Lama’s 1979 visit to Claremont, despite dense documentation of the Claremont Colleges, Blaisdell Institute, and the Claremont School of Theology’s involvement in the latter event. Programs such as “Korean Students’ Sunday Worship” in the 1980-1981 school year and worship and fellowship events specifically for Black students documented in chaplaincy brochures for the 1980-1981 and 1998-1999 school years indicate that the chaplaincy supported Christian gatherings for racial minorities — but that the Protestant and Catholic chaplaincy’s primary services were likely based in white church traditions.
(The Chaplains and a map of McAlister, as printed in a 1985 letter to graduate students from the Honnold Mudd special collections. L to R: Rev. Catharine Grier Calrson, Rabbi Ben Beliak, Fr. M. Francis “Frank” Meskill)
There were also several structural differences between the chaplaincies. At some points in the interfaith chaplaincy’s early history, the Jewish chaplain seemingly received lower levels of institutional support compared to Catholic and Protestant chaplains. Catholic chaplain Fr. Frank Meskill began holding Mass in 1971, while no records of Jewish chaplains holding services exist before 1975 in Honnold Mudd Library’s archives. The archives also show Fr. Jerry Stack and Seminarian Laura Loving serving as assistant chaplains in 1975 from Catholic and Protestant traditions, respectively, but no similar assistant existed for the Jewish community.
Primary assistance for Jewish chaplains arose from part-time Hillel program directors, Hillel’s student leadership and local synagogues throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s. After the 1970s, however, the assistant Catholic and Protestant chaplain positions disappeared.
As time progressed, the chaplaincy also supported more and more student faith group meetings outside of their respective traditions. For instance, in 2013, Jewish chaplain Rabbi Daveen Litwin helped a Pitzer College student start a pagan worship group at McAlister. Coverage of this group also mentioned that Unitarian Universalist, Buddhist and Quaker organizations had been started with assistance from the chaplains around this time.
The 2015 Chaplaincy review and its causes
Despite their support for diverse new religious groups, concerns in the community about the inclusivity of a three-person Chaplaincy persisted among the campus population. This became particularly evident when the chaplains themselves submitted a request to add a part-time Muslim chaplain in 2014. Unfortunately, their request was denied for “budgetary reasons.”
Instability also marked the chaplains’ office in the early 2010s when their longest-serving member, Protestant chaplain Catharine Grier Carlson, retired in 2011. According to Wolf’s history, the Claremont University Consortium (CUC) — the entity in charge of consortium services like the chaplains, Student Health Services, Office of Black Student Affairs and Chicano-Latino Student Affairs — hired a new replacement with special administrative responsibilities. The issue, however, was that the CUC did not clearly state to whom the additional administrative power would fall: between the three chaplains or with the new Protestant chaplain.
Consequently, the Catholic and Jewish chaplains feared that this new hiring decision elevated the Protestant chaplain above the others, destroying the cherished coequal model that had existed for over forty years.
This tension, along with renewed requests for a Muslim chaplain, led to a review in spring 2015 where a committee led by Wolf assessed existing chaplaincy activities and considered alternate models for the chaplaincy going forward.
Some members of the committee, such as Jose Ruiz PO ’16, argued that the chaplaincy should be replaced by a single dean of religious life who would be more “efficient” at matching students to religious services based on their specific cultural backgrounds.
“A lot of Latino Catholics go to a church right down Bonita Avenue that has a mass in Spanish, making it more familiar to Latino students than, say, going to McAlister for mass, which is just in English and the music is a little less upbeat,” Ruiz told The Student Life.
Many others, including Wolf, other faculty, students on the review committee and the TSL editorial board at the time, believed that the chaplains served a key role in the campus community and that CUC should maintain the core aspects of its current structure.
For instance, a May 2015 TSL opinion by Pomona Associate Dean Fernando Lozano, Pomona physics professor David Tanenbaum and Pomona government and politics professor David Menefee-Libey emphasized the role of the chaplaincy at McAlister.
“A review with an overly narrow conception of the stakeholders at McAlister could have an adverse effect on a remarkably multi-layered community, where faculty and staff develop long-lasting relationships with students, different from the traditional hierarchical professor-student relationship,” they wrote. “At McAlister, we create a community by building bridges across ranks, generations and colleges.”
This view ultimately won.
By October 2015, the CUC affirmed that the coequal multi-chaplain structure would remain. A search process for full-time Muslim and Protestant chaplains began by December that year, setting the stage for the beginning of a four-chaplain model at McAlister. Ahead of these new chaplains’ arrival, CUC hired McAlister’s first interim Muslim Life Coordinator and an interim part-time Protestant chaplain.
The search wasn’t easy, however, as Wolf expressed concerns to TSL in February and March 2016 about limited transparency from CUC toward the existing chaplains and the review committee members.
Umar Farooq CM ’17, a representative for the Review Committee’s Muslim Student Association, expressed similar concerns regarding the search process.
“The CUC made an announcement last summer about its commitment to hiring a new Protestant and Muslim chaplain,” Farooq said in a 2015 email to TSL. “But they have yet to come forward with an announcement or search committee, a prospective timeline, or approach members of the Muslim Students Association to serve on the committee.”
Wolf also believed that the communications from CUC ignored any resolution of the “interpersonal” issues which, alongside the budget and expansion problems, had prompted the 2015 review.
Continued chaplaincy turnover
In May 2022, Rev. Lett wrote to several people involved in the chaplaincy hiring process about interpersonal issues in more detail, stating that the “reported code of conduct violations, bullying, chauvinism, intimidation, micro and macro aggressions, implicit and explicit bias,” as well as “competition, territorialism, alliances and power struggles” were not addressed by those supervising the chaplaincy. Lett also expressed concerns that future non-white and female chaplains would receive similar treatment.
According to Lett, four people have served and left the position of Protestant chaplain since 2011 (after Rev. Catherine Grier Carlson’s nearly 30-year tenure) and none appear to have served longer than 2.5 years. Lett highlighted that the Protestant chaplaincy would continue experiencing high chaplain turnover if the chaplaincy office’s internal operations held onto their status quo.
The Jewish chaplain position also appears to have been somewhat unstable since 2011. Changing hands three times, the last two former chaplains, Danny Shapiro and Hannah Elkin, served approximately four and two years, respectively. Previously, four rabbis and one interim sabbatical replacement served in the position between 1973 and 2011, with Ben Beliak, the longest-serving Rabbi, holding his position for about 15 years.
Two Muslim Life Coordinators, Safa Plenty and Shaila Andrabi, and one Imam, Adeel Zeb, have entered and left their position since 2015.
Pandemic and post-pandemic challenges
Challenges continued in 2020 when all programming moved online due to COVID-19-related lockdowns. Adeel Zeb, Muslim Chaplain prior to fall 2023, equated the process of quickly switching from in-person to virtual programming to “cramming for an exam.”
Nonetheless, TSL coverage of virtual religious programming found that Zeb in particular created multiple well-received virtual events for the students he served. Zeb provided spaces such as an international Muslim hangout in the early morning to accommodate time zone differences, as well as to discuss mental health, watch movies or discuss “relevant Islamic topics” during Thursday evening Halaqa (study circle).
It is unclear whether any lasting changes result from these innovations, as chaplaincy events appear to be primarily in-person, based on flyers and the chaplaincy event calendar. Aside from the Catholic Chaplain Fr. Joe Fenton, who retired in October 2024, none of the other chaplains at McAlister have served in their positions for more than two years.
More recently, the Jewish Chaplaincy has seen some major shifts. A 1992 Jewish life brochure and a notice about the departure of Rabbi Daveen Litwin in 2015 appear to indicate that within the second half of the interfaith chaplaincy’s first 50 years, many Jewish chaplains have held dual roles as the director of Claremont Hillel. In 2023, however, the Claremont Hillel website indicated that the two roles were separated so that the Jewish chaplain could focus on “pastoral care, interfaith work and religious life.”
For some students, the separation of Hillel and the chaplaincy was essential to their comfort with chaplaincy services in light of political developments on campus.
“Hillel doesn’t feel like a … Jewish space that’s meant for me. In my political organizing work and the complexity of my Jewish … Identity, Ezra Levinson PZ ’27 said. “[It] just isn’t a space I feel comfy in because of their … standards of partnership which limits the types of speech that their members and partners can express and also because of their history of surveilling and repressing student organizing.”
Levinson also knew of people who were “involved with Hillel, even planning their events … and have essentially either left the organization or been pushed out over political disagreements regarding Palestine and regarding campus protests for Palestine and I think that’s just another illustration of why it’s so important that Hillel not be … a central part of Jewish life on campus.”
The chaplaincy, however, held a strongly positive image for Levinson as “trying very hard to collaborate with other Jewish organizations and just … bring in the largest possible community and be as much of a resource as they can.”
She also highlighted the “consistent Shabbat services” which she attends “almost every Friday.”
Consequently, the Jewish chaplaincy became more inclusive of students critical of Hillel’s stance on Israel after the Jewish Chaplain and Hillel director positions split. Hillel still engages with chaplaincy services, but the chaplain no longer prioritizes Hillel over other Jewish student organizations with possibly contrasting outlooks on religion and politics as they would when serving in both the Hillel director and Jewish Chaplain roles.
Chaplaincy Services At Present
The chaplaincy currently hosts a variety of weekly events, including Catholic masses on either Sunday morning or afternoon, Muslim Jumma prayer followed by lunch on Friday late morning and afternoon and Muslim Halaqa with the Imam on Thursday evenings. Muslim chaplain Hadi Qazwini also holds office hours for students and faculty to “ask questions, share concerns or just chat” from 2 to 4 p.m. every Tuesday.
The chaplains also usually offer special programming for holidays such as the Jewish High Holy Days, Ramadan and Easter. Buddhist, Sikh, Hindu, Baha’i, Zen meditation, Latter-Day-Saints, Protestant and Jewish student organizations are also recognized on the chaplaincy website and may hold events at the McAlister center with and without direct chaplain participation.
Through its five decades of operation on campus, the chaplaincy has provided valuable connections between students and the larger Claremont community as well as opportunities for learning about religious traditions. The future of the chaplaincy is still mired in staff turnover and the problem of expansion or revision lingers, but meaningful communities and events still develop within McAlister’s walls through its support.
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