The Roman Catholics also are extremely active on this campus. Our activities also bring us into contact with staff and faculty. We may preside at a faculty wedding, provide pastoral care for a staff member who has lost a loved one, or bring students, faculty and staff together for a conversation about spirituality, social justice and intellectual endeavors. Jane Stanford saw Memorial Church as central to campus. The legacy of the location of the church, I think, has to do with the inclusion of the whole person in the intellectual mission of this university.
Intellectual pursuit is at the heart of our work.
We challenge students to strive for intellectual rigor in their religious lives and to search for ways to bridge what they are doing in the classroom with what they are doing in their religious practices. I am amazed by the number of campus residents, students, staff and faculty from across the religious spectrum who seek out Memorial Church as a place of solace, meditation and beauty. Of particular interest to me are, of course, the religious issues in students' lives. I find striking the variety of responses among students to religious ideas, questions and realities they encounter in their academic life. Students frequently are presented with their first critical analysis of religious texts in their courses, and such study is challenging, liberating and raises all kinds of questions.