The chaplains at Ivy League and other top schools say the students have learned about the concerns of other faiths, while finding ways to express their own.
Union, a private, ecumenical school that serves as Columbia University’s faculty of theology but maintains a separate endowment, is the first U.S. institute of higher education known to divest from the war in Gaza.
‘We were doing nothing but standing on that piece of property, singing, chanting, praying in the road when we were dragged off,’ said the Rev. Seth Wispelwey.
The rally was a sign of political evangelicalism’s increasing interest in campus politics writ large and the pro-Palestinian campus protests in particular.
U.S. Rep. Tim Walberg, a Republican from Michigan who used to serve as a Baptist pastor, suggested at a town hall during Holy Week that the Gaza Strip should be nuked.
'Usually people are joyful today and kids are excited. But when you compare children here who have water and food and a family to what’s happening in Gaza, how can you be happy?' said Fayaz Dakkak, a Palestinian storeowner.
‘We repent of the ways we have not stood alongside our Palestinian siblings in faithful witness in the midst of their grief, agony, and sorrow,’ the leaders wrote.