Chaplain embraces his “lived faith”
When David Coolidge graduated from Brown in 2001, he did not imagine that eight years later he would return to his alma mater as its Muslim chaplain. Coolidge’s religious and professional journey since arriving here more than a decade ago is one of intellectual and spiritual exploration. He cites Brown’s open curriculum and the nature of student life on campus as central to his conversion to Islam during his sophomore year.
Since then, Coolidge has had extensive training in Islamic sacred texts, researched the interpretation and practice of Islam in 21st-century America at Princeton, and served as a Muslim advisor at Dartmouth. He spoke with Today at Brown about his experiences as a Muslim student and how Muslim chaplaincies today are helping to support the next generation of Muslim students on American campuses.
How did you come to embrace Islam as an undergraduate?
My most consistent passion since high school has been religion. I was raised in a nondenominational Protestant family, but when my freshman world history class visited both a Hindu temple and a Buddhist temple, I became nearly obsessed with trying to make sense out of the religious history of humanity.
I came to Brown knowing that I wanted to study religion, and the University’s open curriculum and vibrant religious life offered me the perfect opportunity to further my exploration. I took religious studies courses, visited various places of worship, engaged in interfaith community service projects – basically anything that would add to my knowledge and understanding of religion in the world. While engaged in this process, I started to learn more about Islam, taking courses and doing extra outside reading.
The summer between my first and second year at Brown, while I was working as a camp counselor, I read and digested the Qur’an in a pristine, natural environment. I felt there was a symbiosis between the signs in nature and the signs in the sacred text. The word in Arabic, aayah, for these spiritual signs is the same as the word we would normally translate as “a verse of the Qur’an.”
During the fall of my sophomore year, I came to believe in the basic elements of the Islamic worldview and joined the Brown Muslim Students Association (BMSA).
After your conversion, how did you experience your integration into the Muslim communities among which you lived?
It is one thing to buy into the theology of Islam and a very different thing to experience the anthropology of Islam as an insider. After my conversion, I went through a process of voluntary socialization within the Brown Muslim community and beyond. During my junior year, I decided to move in with two students I knew from the BMSA, at least in part so as to better understand the daily life and practices of Muslims.
The BMSA at that time was populated by Muslims from enormously diverse backgrounds. Thus, they were in an active process of trying to create a shared sense of community that respected and valued diversity. I, as a convert, was embraced as part of that diversity.
I also attended the mosque in the West End of Providence. And I was taking any course I could find at Brown that dealt with Islam. Professor of History Engin Akarli and former Associate Professor of Religious Studies Muhammad Qasim Zaman co-taught a course on Islamic law that gave me the opportunity to reflect on the legal tradition that is so essential to Islam. Other than these venues, there were few places at Brown where Muslim students could grapple with the core issues of Islam, especially as they lived it in their day-to-day lives.
Returning to Brown more than a decade after you first arrived, what changes do you observe within the Muslim student community?
A major reason why I wanted to become a Muslim chaplain was to share with Muslim students some of the resources and processes my contemporaries and I devised to integrate our religious practices and theological explorations with campus living. Islam is a very practical religion – it is a lived religion. Conversations about Islam and the sacred texts are not confined to one place on the Brown campus.
For instance, 10 years ago within the Brown Muslim student community we were having conversations regarding deep questions about our faith life on campus and our dreams beyond Brown. Many of these were difficult to bring into the classroom. In a sense, we were just scraping by to identify resources for study, prayer, and research. I could have deeply benefited from guidance and seasoned perspectives to assist with my own journey.
Since then, I think, a number of changes at colleges and universities have made it possible for Muslim students to feel encouraged about their role in and contributions to campus life. For instance, deeper intellectual engagement about Islam combined with a new generation of Muslim scholars has opened up opportunities for enhanced discourse on campuses. And, of course, we are now seeing more and more Muslim chaplains in campus ministries. What is so important about Brown is the University’s institutional commitment to this position within its chaplaincy.
We are arriving at a point where Muslim students don’t always have to struggle to see how Islam fits into their lives. The dichotomy between the classroom and the Iftar [Ramadan fast-breaking meal] is fading. There can be harmony between Muslims’ religion and cultures and their professional lives.
What are your hopes for your Muslim chaplaincy?
In a time when Islam and Muslims are a constant part of public discourse, it is essential that the Muslim chaplain play an integral role in the entire institution’s engagement with the faith of one-fifth of the world’s population. I see my work here as supporting that effort. I try to bring the insights and character of my teachers to my work at Brown today – those I studied with as an undergraduate, as a graduate student, and now as a budding scholar/activist in the American Muslim community. Every one of them has given me a little bit of pollen, and now it is up to me to return to Brown and create new honey.