Religion is flourishing at Mr. Jefferson’s University. From the seemingly infinite number of religious organizations that court athletes, sorority sisters, fraternity brothers, writers, physicians, and community activists, to Black Voices concerts, Jazz Sabbaths and joint worship services, to the nationally acclaimed Religious Studies Department from which professors are conducting innovative projects on interfaith dialogue, scriptural reasoning, religion and public policy, and the academic promise of lived theological experience, it is more and more difficult to imagine the University without its religious features, or a time when such wide-ranging religious expression was not so welcome or celebrated.

Given this, one wonders whether the founder and patron saint of the University is rolling over in his grave or breathing a posthumous sigh of relief that his humble college finally reflects a bit of religious diversity. The story of religion at the University of Virginia cuts to the very heart of the separation of church and state debate, and serves as an illuminating local case study of issues too often buried in polarized national rhetoric. The role of religion at the University is the ironic tale of a founder’s wish for religious diversity through a relatively strict separation of church and state, and the slow realization of that wish for diversity and free expression through what has in fact been a blurring of that separation.

Though many of his contemporaries thought the founding of a secular University signaled outright hostility towards religion, Jefferson was vocally hostile only to the wedding of public education and the religious suasions of a particular denomination. Religion was not something to be imposed on students, just as it was not something the state should impose on citizens; the errors and vices of religion could best be guarded against when creeds and practices were professed and embodied voluntarily. Jefferson’s 1818 Rockfish Gap Report of the Commissioners Appointed to Fix the Site of the University of Virginia is one helpful source of his thoughts on the matter:

We have proposed no professor of divinity;… rather… the proofs of the being of a God, the creator, preserver, and supreme ruler of the universe, the author of all relations of morality, and of the laws and obligations these infer, will be within the province of the professor of ethics to which adding the developments of these moral obligations, of those in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, a basis will be formed common to all sects. Proceeding thus far without offense to the Constitution, we have thought it proper at this point to leave every sect to provide, as they think fittest the means of further instruction in their own peculiar tenets.

Of course, it would be unlike Jefferson to clearly and consistently articulate his stance regarding religion at the University throughout the whole of his writings. In some letters, Jefferson expressed a willingness to designate space for religious worship (offering a part of the Rotunda), provided that the worship was voluntary and privately funded, and even went as far as proposing in 1822 a compromise that would allow students to take courses from neighboring divinity schools. In 1826, however, Jefferson argued against the use of Pavilion I for religious services. A general policy of non-recognition of any denominational group became the standard policy of the University administration.

In the mid-nineteenth century, when social reform movements were beginning to pick up steam, nondenominational religious forums began to surface on grounds. Divine services were performed by a Chaplain appointed from the four principal denominations of the state, and the first university chapter of the YMCA was established, beginning a 110-year reign as the principal voice on religious matters around grounds. Indeed, due to its nondenominational character, the YMCA would be granted an enormous amount of control not only over religious events and activities, but student affairs in general.

Founded in 1858, the YMCA was designed to promote “Christian sympathy and brotherhood, and to advance the moral and religious welfare of the students of this Institution, and of others around us.” Privately operated, the University YMCA provided students with Bible studies, prayer meetings, religious services, and missions to the Ragged Mountains. By the turn of the century, it was given a full page in the University catalog and was publishing many student resource guides and overseeing most student activities. In their 1900 book, The University of Virginia: Glimpses of its Past and Present, John Patton and Sallie Doswell wrote of the YMCA,

The day of his arrival at the University the new student is convinced that those who have declared the institution atheistical in foundation and purpose – a charge which is made maliciously to this day in some quarters – have not told the whole truth. He is soon made to understand that there is such a thing as religious enterprise at this institution, and that the matriculates bear a large part in its direction. He finds that he is expected to do his share, if he is so minded, but it is a matter of free choice with him, while he can scarcely escape the pervasive influence of the Young Men’s Christian Association, and if he has any bent toward Bible study and religious endeavor, he will find here abundant opportunity, more perhaps, that at any other undenominational American college.

Interestingly, by 1904, students were instructed to come straight from the trains to the YMCA to start their university career. There, they were presented with information about housing, student organizations, and names and addresses of enrolled students.

The YMCA is one example of how, when a strict separation of church and state was enforced, religious diversity was still largely stunted on grounds. The non-recognition of denominations gave the appearance of religious freedom, but the special status given to the nondenominational YMCA betrayed a strong bias toward the Protestant religious tradition, indeed, as close a religious establishment as possible, without paying much attention to the value of Jewish or Eastern traditions. Curiously, non-recognition perpetuated rather than curbed religious hegemony.

The cornerstone to the UVA Chapel was laid in 1885 and opened in 1890. Its neo-gothic character, in sharp contrast to the Rotunda’s neo-classic design, stands as a vivid reminder of the tension, but potential harmony, of religion and reason inhabiting the same space. Many have pointed out that the Chapel was placed outside the pristine structure of the central Lawn, illustrating spatially that the exercise of religion was tangential to the primary work of scholarship. The construction of the Chapel followed years of concern that the university was a “godless” place. The structure, once constructed, was shared by many Christian denominations, insuring that no single set of religious practices would prevail.

While Protestant hegemony was tacitly sanctioned, Jews were essentially excluded from teaching at the University until the early twentieth century. Though UVA was the first American college to hire a Jewish professor to teach a secular subject, it left James Joseph Sylvester with little choice but to leave after being verbally harassed by students shortly after his hiring in 1841. There was not another Jewish professor until the 1920’s, when Linfield Ben-Zion became part of the faculty. A program to employed distinguished displaced faculty – refugees from Nazi Germany – was supported at U.Va. after the beginnings of war in 1939, as the correspondence relating to Professor Freund illustrates. But it was not until the 1960s that Jewish faculty entered the university in larger numbers. Students were never formally excluded, but their numbers were carefully monitored to insure their minority influence and status. Such monitoring occurred from the mid 1920s at least through the early 1940s.

The importance of the YMCA diminished after the 1950s when most of the major denominations in the Charlottesville community began to employ full-time or part-time student religious workers serving the students of their respective tradition. With the founding of the Student Union and the building of Newcomb Hall, the YMCA no longer functioned as the chief coordinator of social life. Its principal functions now fulfilled by other organizations, the Y folded in 1968.

The 1960s was a particularly eventful decade that saw the university president, Edgar Shannon, battle an ambitious Student Council seeking to recognize and allot public space to denominational religious groups. Shannon won the first few rounds, but conceded the fight to students in 1973, opening the door to the establishment of the many denominational organizations and fellowships we see today. It was also in the 60s that the Religious Studies department was re-founded (a small, privately funded, two faculty member Bible Lectureship existed before), signaling the recognition of religion as a subject worthy of public academic inquiry.

The University became reacquainted with the church-state controversy when the Wide Awake Supreme Court case broke in 1994. Born-again Christian Ronald Rosenberger decided to start a publication in 1991 called Wide Awake that would offer a Christian perspective to campus life. He applied for $5,862 from Student Council but was turned down because the magazine was deemed a “religious activity.” Rosenberger sued the University, lost the case in the early rounds, but thanks to the intervention of Attorney General Jim Gilmore, had his case heard before the Supreme Court in 1995. Pat Robertson’s American Center for Law and Justice filed a brief on Rosenberger’s behalf, and many other Christian law organizations became involved. Rosenberger won 5-4 and the Board of Visitors changed their funding policies in November of that year. Students were later given the freedom to demand a refund of their activity fee if they objected to a Student Council-funded organization.

The next few decades will surely provide intriguing drama as the University tries to collectively balance the need for religious freedom and Jefferson’s vision of an authentically public university. The University will certainly have rich resources to draw from as it continues to carve out its identity as a home to students of all religions.

- Written by John Kiess