After several years of inactivity, William Jewell College is restoring spiritual services with the launch of its Center for Faith and Culture. The comprehensive program focuses on individual spiritual exploration with campus- and community-wide courses, meetings and resources.

This year’s leadership for the Center includes Reverend Craig MacLeod Walls, director of the program; Reverend and Chaplin Melissa Bryson Dowling; and Brendon Benz, theologian-in-residence and professor of history.

The Center, which was initially announced to begin in fall 2021, is stated to be modeled after a similar program at the Yale Divinity School. According to the Center’s webpage, Philip (‘71) and Patricia Love greatly contributed to the program financially and ideologically. Previously appointed as the managing director for the Yale Divinity School’s own Center for Faith and Culture, Philip Love brought the idea to Jewell’s President’s Advisory Council to be expanded upon and eventually implemented this year.

The Center was created with the intent to “foster spiritual exploration, authentic dialogue, and contemplation of the known and unknown in pursuit of wisdom, reconciliation and human flourishing,” according to its “Inaugural Season” brochure.

As a means of fulfilling this mission, the Center hosts “personal flourishing classes” dedicated to spiritual exploration at partnered churches in the Liberty area. The classes are open to both Jewell students, faculty and staff, as well as the broader Liberty and Kansas City community. Partnered churches, including the Country Club Christian Church, Second Baptist Church, Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral and Village Church, provide speakers on certain topics who then host courses that seek to bridge the divide between the sacred and the secular. Members of Jewell’s faculty also contribute as speakers to the course listings for the Center’s 2022-2023 class schedule.

Aside from emphasizing the importance of community and personal flourishing in a spiritual context, the program also seeks to engage with Jewell students directly. Benz cited one such effort as the upcoming “Fellows Program.”

“We hope to bring in between 10 and 20 students every year…who will have their major…then a minor in what we’re going to call Faith and Culture,” Benz stated. “And that’ll be basically [composed of] five sacred and secular courses with intense discussions, especially during their first year, on… what [their] intended major is going to look like, as a person of faith and as a person who takes spirituality seriously.”

The Center also aims to expand the range of Sacred and Secular Critical Thought & Inquiry courses offered to students. With the Fellows Program and new courses set to explore spirituality, Benz said he hopes students can integrate faith and spirituality into their lives during their college years and beyond.

“A life of faith intersects with vocation – with life,” Benz said. “Too often those two are separated: sacred and secular. [These] flourishing courses are about the intersection of [students’ and faculty’s] discipline and faith. So, for example, how do I live well in political science, and how does my faith inform my accounting, as in personal finances?”

According to the Center’s webpage, personal flourishing courses and the Fellows Program will emphasize Christian values and Biblical teachings, but they still intend to engage in interfaith dialogue to “acknowledge the points of continuity that unite us even as we acknowledge and wrestle with our differences.”

“We already have an imam teaching a class on Islam and the Muslim experience here at Jewell, Dr. Howard teaching [a course on] Black freedom movements [and] a priest who is discussing Catholicism,” Benz stated. “Part of the Fellowship Program will be a deeper dive into understanding our differences between religious traditions, but also similarities—embracing the differences, recognizing those and not trying to iron them or cover them over. [To] find that in spite of our differences—in spite of our different views on reality—we can work together for a better world.”

Reverend Dowling’s role as college chaplain is particularly responsive to the needs and wants of the student body regarding spirituality and introspection. She said she hopes to “meet with as many students as possible” during her first year as Chaplain. To this end, she leads weekly “The Reflective Self” meetings and has established “Chaplain Chats,” which provide students with an opportunity to have one-on-one support discussions. Reverend Dowling said she is also interested in “connecting [students] to the broader community.” 

The Center’s interconnections between students and the community are reflected in the leadership structure of the center. As explained by Reverend MacLeod Walls, Reverend Dowling and Benz, the program’s leadership is “community-facing,” “student-facing” and “academic-facing,” respectively. However, emphasized by Benz, there is significant overlap amidst their respective roles.

Reverend MacLeod Walls said he is especially positioned to engage with the broader Kansas City and Liberty community, as well as alumni—in line with Philip Love’s vision of the Center. The personal flourishing classes are specifically meant to be responsive to the needs of a broader spiritual community, reflected in the courses’ open enrollment and price range.

Further, the Center itself represents an important occasion in the college’s history. According to Reverend MacLeod Walls, “It’s really important to recognize that [Reverend Dowling] is our first female chaplain in 173 years.”

Reverend Dowling and Benz note that the Center may be similar to a traditional academic department in many ways, but it is unique in that it is also a dynamic program. 

“The center isn’t a static thing. It’s going to grow and evolve as we figure out what it’s capable of,” Reverend Dowling said.

In all, the Center for Faith and Culture will have a variety of opportunities to offer students, faculty and the broader Liberty and Kansas City community this year and in the future. The leadership of the Center said they are excited about restoring a structured faith and culture program at Jewell, and they will continue to discuss new ideas about symposiums, sacred art and community classes and college courses.

“We’re creating something, and that’s what’s exciting about this,” Reverend MacLeod Walls stated. “Some things will not work. Some things we’ll have to discard and try something else.” 

Critics allege recent amendments approved by France’s Senate to an anti-separatism bill infringe on civil liberties and reflect rising Islamophobia among French political elites. 

The amendments were offered to a broader anti-separatism bill backed by French President Emmanuel Macron in response to recent terrorist attacks. The bill is intended to strengthen France’s policy of strict secularism. In particular, the French political elites widely viewed the murder of Samuel Paty, a public school teacher executed by 18-year-old Abdoullakh Anzorov after using cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed in a class, as an attack on France’s secularist tradition. 

The Senate-approved amendments include controversial provisions that would ban girls under the age of 18 from wearing a hijab and prohibit hijab-wearing parents from accompanying school trips. Critics condemn the bill for regulating girls’ bodies and also question the age demarcation in the Senate amendment, noting that the Senate recently backed a bill to impose 15 as the age of consent in France. 

To be enacted, the amendments would have to be approved by France’s lower parliamentary house, the National Assembly. The amendments face uncertain prospects in the Assembly where Macron’s La République En Marche! Party holds the largest bloc of seats. However, the party and Macron’s rightward shift in the last few months fuel concern.

Even if the amendments were to be included by the National Assembly in the final bill, experts contend that they would likely be struck down by France’s constitutional council. 

Lurking in the background of this debate is a charged political environment about France’s secularist tradition and the looming presidential election in 2022. 

Like the United States, France’s Constitution requires religious neutrality on the part of the state. This tradition in France is known as laïcité. Laïcité is a term commentators have struggled to translate into English. Its intended purpose is to impose a strict separation between religion and public policy. Different historical and cultural experiences underpin the American and French conceptions of the separation of religion and state.

Both originate in the intellectual ferment of the Enlightenment. Whereas the historical roots of the American principle of separation of church and state are rooted in a conception of individual religious freedom, laïcité is rooted in the idea of collective freedom from religious domination. In the French context, laïcité is historically identified as being in opposition to the traditionally powerful role that the Catholic Church played in France. 

During the convulsions of the French Revolution, the first glimpses of a laïcité policy are visible in legislation advanced in 1795 but were quickly discarded in the midst of political turmoil. 

The policy would resurface after the dissolution of the Second French Empire and the formation of the French Third Republic in 1870. Opponents of the Catholic Church’s continuing role in French politics successfully passed a version of laïcité in 1905 and the principle has largely proven a pillar of the French political system since. Both the Constitution of Fourth Republic and the current Fifth Republic enshrine laïcité. 

Though the policy was initially entrenched as a bulwark against Catholic influence, as France’s Muslim population has grown to one of the largest in Europe, fraught debates began between Islam and laïcité in French society. This ongoing debate between laïcité and Islam has drawn repeated accusations of Islamophobia on the part of the French government by critics in the past 30 years.

In seeking election in 2017 and during his first years in office, Macron cultivated a personal image as a political moderate and social liberal. However, following Islamist-inspired terrorist attacks, Macron has shifted towards the right.

To orchestrate and serve as a symbol of this governmental shake-up, Macron elevated Gérald Darmanin, a youthful lightning rod of French conservatism, to the powerful Ministry of Interior. 

This position – a combination of the duties of the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security in the U.S. who also has charge over France’s police force – is one of the most prominent in France.  

Darmanin remains under investigation for a 2009 rape allegation as well, drawing criticism to Macron for selecting him to head one of the most powerful ministries in France.

Moreover, Darmanin has polarized the electorate with staunch support for French police that draws strong support from powerful police unions while alienating much of the left. Further, critics accuse Darmanin of playing into Islamophobia with inflammatory rhetoric and action, such as criticizing halal shelves in stores. 

Darmanin’s appointment and tenure already have proven to be controversial. Loathed by the left for many of his stances, Darmanin is viewed suspiciously by the right for his defection from the traditional conservative party, Les Républicains, to join Macron. Darmanin remains close to former conservative French president, Nicolas Sarkozy.  

In a vivid illustration of the Macron Administration’s rightward shift, Darmanin recently accused Le Pen of being soft on radical Islam. 

Many have portrayed the anti-separatism bill as a strategy on the part of Macron ahead of next year’s presidential election. Analysts predict that Macron’s most formidable opponent will be Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right National Rally Party. 

Facing a fractured field on the left, pundits predict Macron is trying to lure some right-leaning voters away from Le Pen through taking actions on some of the far right’s focal issues.

This has included rhetorical changes to emphasize law and order and the introduction of this anti-separatism legislation that many see as explicitly targeting Islam. Macron and his ministers have also begun warning against “Islamo-leftism” in speeches. Macron also supports a controversial security bill that would toughen restrictions on filming police. 

Political experts and analysts warn Macron’s rightward shift risks alienating those on the left who Macron needs to turn out in a run-off election against Le Pen. In response to Macron’s strategy and recent tactics, critics repeat versions of Macron’s past statements, cautioning against weaponizing laïcité.