Project Story

Background

Cannon Chapel was opened in 1981 to serve both as a worship and an academic space for Emory's Candler School of Theology and as an multifaith house of prayer for Emory's Atlanta campus. At that time, the religious demographics of American universities were primarily Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish, and Cannon was intended to be a worship space for Christian and Jewish communities, with both a copper cross and a menorah fashioned for the front of the sanctuary.

In the forty years since then, the religious diversity of the United States and of American higher education has continued to grow. As the children of the "new immigration" to the U.S. following the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 began to arrive at colleges and universities in the 1990s and 2000s, they brought with them other religious traditions in greater numbers, in including Islam, Hindusim, and Buddhism as well as Sikhism and Jainism and others.

At the same time, over the past twenty years since September 11, 2001, and the many attacks on mosques, synagogues, churches, gurdwaras, and temples since that time, there has been rising awareness in U.S. society of the diversity of the world's religions and philosophies and how they come into contact and interact, in either destructive or constructive ways. This has led to a significant rise in the interfaith movement, with efforts to bring religious and nonreligious communities together for dialogue, understanding, service, peacemaking, and social justice.

From their founding, many private universities in the United States have had Christian chapels, and since the 1980s organizations like Hillel and Chabad have helped to add centers for Jewish life to campuses. But with the more recent increase in the numbers of Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Humanist, and other students on campus, many universities have recognized the need to provide additional sacred space, that can be used for Muslim prayer, Hindu aarthi, and Buddhist meditation as well as be a place for intersectional community building and activities by students, faculty, staff, and community members of all faith traditions and none.

These are places for religious practice, contemplation, celebrations, gatherings, educational events, meetings, conferences, and study. A number of Emory's peer institutions have created beautiful examples of such spaces. And since the 1990s, students, faculty, and staff at Emory have desired such an interfaith center, especially since Emory is a university in which religious and ethical practice, growth in wisdom, service to humanity, diversity, equity, inclusion, and wellness are such core values. The Emory Interfaith Center will provide a home at Emory for religious and philosophical diversity as well as a site for the cultivation of interreligious understanding, cooperation, and leadership. Such facilities have become important to students, faculty, and staff choosing a university for study, work, and community.

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