Brown University Office of the Chaplains and Religious Life

12/07/2025

Join us this afternoon at 4 pm at Sayles Hall for the 109th Annual Service of Lessons and Carols! If you can't be there in person, join us via livestream https://livestream.brown.edu/chaplains

12/04/2025

Come join us this Sunday for amazing performances and don’t forget to bring nonperishable food items to donate!! All are welcomed and we can’t wait to see you there!🤍

11/21/2025

Thank you to everyone who came to our first Thursday Night Supper of the semester!! We hope you had an amazing time and enjoyed the food!!!

Special thanks to Father Justin and Rabbi Sam for taking the time to connect with us and share their personal relationship to music!

Don’t worry if you missed this one, we will have many more!! Can’t wait to see you then!!❤️😊

11/14/2025

Thursday Night Interfaith Supper is back!😆 Please join us for our first TNS of the semester on November 20th. We are looking forward to seeing you at this beloved initiative from the Office of the Chaplains & Religious Life.

We will be meeting at Page Robinson room 411. Come ready to eat, engage, listen, meet new friends and see old faces. We look forward to you joining us!

This month we will be discussing music in religious tradition with Father Justin Bolger and Rabbi Sam Weiss!

🔗: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScpscyAQNAgVbxG7H2meeDF8bzfBawkp0wfYKST8Y5F9f8K3g/viewform

03/20/2024

Dr. Sa'ed Atshan of Swarthmore College visited Brown last Thursday to deliver the 2024 K. Brooke Anderson Lecture in First Unitarian Church of Providence. Dr. Atshan spoke about his time at Ramallah Friends School, a Quaker educational institution in the West Bank of Palestine, and his later experience in the US attending college and working in academia as a q***r Palestinian Quaker. He closed by sharing some advice on how to stay sane and centered in a tumultuous world. After the lecture, dozens of students, faculty, staff, and community members came together over a meal at the Brown Faculty Club to discuss how Dr. Atshan's story resonated with their own lives. Thank you Dr. Atshan, and everyone who participated in this wonderful event!

02/01/2024

🌟 Save the date & join us on Thursday, February 22, 4 - 5:30 pm for the first OCRL Sacred Spaces Campus Walking Tour 🐻

🙏🏽 This event will give Brown community members an opportunity to explore the various sacred spaces on campus in the hopes of developing a greater understanding of the religious resources at Brown. Students, faculty and staff are welcome! 🤗

🔸 This walking tour will visit Manning Chapel, the Brown-RISD Catholic Center, Brown-RISD Hillel, and the Muslim Student Center. At each stop, we will hear from community leaders and students who regularly make use of the space. The tour will conclude at the home of the Chaplain of the University, Reverend Janet Cooper Nelson, for the monthly Thursday Night Interfaith Supper ( ).

Tour Schedule:
4 pm — Meet at/explore Manning Chapel (2nd Floor of Manning Hall)
▪️
4:15 pm — Walk to Brown-RISD Catholic Center
▪️
4:40 pm — Walk to Brown-RISD Hillel
▪️
5:05 pm — Walk to Muslim Students Center
▪️
5:30 pm — Walk to Rev. Cooper-Nelson’s home (host of TNS)
▪️
5:35 pm - 7 pm — Thursday Night Interfaith Supper

♿️ Please note that Manning Chapel is located on the 2nd Floor of Manning Hall. If you have accessibility questions or needs please reach out to the Office of the Chaplains in advance so that we may provide assistance accordingly. Thank you.

01/30/2024

During Fall 2023, the Christian Mindfulness Meditation group hosted interfaith sessions and invited new voices and guests who belong to different religious traditions. 🙏🏽
The Chaplains at Brown happily joined to explore the beauty of God’s creation and the relation to it by sharing their own faith and tradition.

🌼 For Spring 2024, every Tuesday, the group will continue to invite everyone to meditate at Manning Chapel on the song of Saint Francis of Assisi, the Canticle of Creatures, and contemplate nature in order to rediscover ourselves as creatures and guardians. Join us!

12/14/2023

Grateful for our team this semester! (Only missing one very important person from this photo!) This morning we enjoyed our important end of semester tradition to come together and share a meal.

The Office of the Chaplains & Religious Life is closed for winter break December 22, 2023- January 8, 2024! If we don’t see you next week, we’ll catch you in the new year! Wishing all of a peaceful end to the semester and a joyous new year. ✨

12/08/2023

Thank you and friends for collecting pantry items for the Bear Market Food Exchange at your birthday pawty 🐾 🥳 The continued support across campus this semester has kept the pantry shelf well-stocked, and makes a significant impact on our community 🐻❤️🙏🏽

12/08/2023

Opinion piece for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency by our own Rabbi Jason, Associate Chaplain for the Jewish Community at Brown University. [Click to read full op-ed.]

" Last summer, I became a chaplain at Brown University, a campus at which a celebration of the uniqueness of every student is embedded in our culture, where we pride ourselves on bringing students together in creative and unexpected ways.

That means this is my first Hanukkah on campus. And what a time: Two months after the darkest day in contemporary Jewish history, some Jewish students are feeling singled out for publicly supporting Israel’s military action in Gaza. Some are feeling unwelcome in institutional Jewish spaces because they do not identify with the word “Zionist.” Some Jewish and Arab students have shared that they have felt as if they were tiptoeing, seeking to find peers with whom they could mourn for all people in Israel-Palestine who have been assaulted or murdered and express horror at the trauma that is ongoing....
..This week our students will gather around campus with their friends, light the menorah, eat foods fried in oil and tell Hanukkah stories on their own terms, stories that some may have learned in preschool and some they are starting to encounter for the first time as Jewish young adults.

My wishes for all of us this Hanukkah 5784 are opportunities to connect with others in ways that are creative and challenging, in ways that surprise us, and in ways that center our ongoing senses of curiosity and wonder in this season of light — may it increase beyond these eight nights."

A holiday about a military victory also celebrates the triumph of the human soul, writes a chaplain at Brown University.

12/08/2023

Join the Brown-RISD Catholic Community for Mass today!
Today is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception! It is a holy day of obligation. Masses will be held at 12:05pm and 5pm* in Manning Chapel.

*Please note the time change from the graphic.

12/05/2023

Thank you to all of those who joined us this past Sunday for our 107th Annual Service of Lessons and Carols! We are grateful for the time and talents of .steinbach.music , University Organist, Brass & Timpani, the Brown University Chorus led by Fred Jodry, and .grace gospel choir led by .🎵✨🌲

Lessons & Carols is an ancient form of comunal worship during the season. Choral music and congregational hymns supplement Biblical texts and readings. The readers of the lessons broadly represent our University community and we thank them for participating in this yearly celebration. If you missed this year’s event, stay tuned for the link to the recorded service. 🎶