Hindu chaplain leads the way at USC

LOS ANGELES — Varun Soni straightened his shoulders and grasped the lectern, his dark suit flanked by the stately white robes of priests and ministers.

A beloved professor had been stabbed to death. As USC’s head chaplain, it fell to Soni to help the hundreds gathered outside that day to process their loss.

And so he spoke to them of the stories he’d collected, the pain he’d shared, the grief he had witnessed. And he offered words to help them, though not from the Bible or any other religious text.

“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel,” he said, quoting Maya Angelou, before he bowed his head in a universal “Amen.”

Soni is an unusual college chaplain. He is a Hindu. He has a law degree. In 2008, when USC hired him as its dean of religious life, he was the sole head chaplain at a major American university who was not only not a Christian but not an ordained Christian at that. Today, at a time when differences — religious and otherwise — grow ever more fraught and complex, he remains all but alone in breaking the Protestant chaplain mold, except for a rabbi at Dartmouth, another at Wesleyan, a Buddhist at Emerson.

“It’s very, very hard to divorce the pomp and circumstances of academia from particularly Protestant traditions,” said Dena Bodian, president of the National Assn. of College and University Chaplains. “Chaplains like Varun enable us all to rethink what chaplaincy in higher ed could look like.”

The job, after all, is about much more than Christianity. As USC’s spiritual leader and moral voice, Soni oversees about 90 campus religious groups including atheists and agnostics, Baha’is and Zoroastrians.

Inside and outside the lecture halls and dormitories, he bridges what he sees as the gap between the slow-moving wheels of academic change and a new generation’s impatience with tradition. He counters the tendency to split apart and subdivide with a message of tolerance, coexistence and respect. “If we want to know what religion is going to look like in the United States in 20 years, just look at what’s happening on college campuses now,” he said. “Particularly at a time when our country is so polarized, and people aren’t speaking to each other.”

Soni himself exemplifies the many in the one. He holds five degrees — from Harvard Divinity School, UC Santa Barbara, UCLA’s law school and the University of Cape Town, where he wrote his doctoral dissertation in religious studies on Bob Marley as a spiritual figure who used his work to spread a divine message. As an undergraduate at Tufts University, Soni studied in India at Bodh Gaya, where Buddha attained enlightenment.

He’s consulted for the Obama administration, produced a graphic novel and advises celebrity religious scholar Reza Aslan. The son of immigrant doctors, he was raised in Newport Beach, where he went to a Catholic elementary school and learned from his best friends, who were Jewish, and his grandfather, a Buddhist who grew up around Mahatma Gandhi.

“Gandhi, that’s why I went to law school and studied religion,” Soni said, nodding to a framed portrait hung alongside the Dalai Lama and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in his office. “Those are my guys — people who brought together the spiritual and the scholarly world for the purposes of social change.”

What better place to bridge these two worlds than a college campus?

It’s not easy, Soni acknowledged, to guide a generation that grew up seeing religion as a source of terrorism and patriarchy, whose institutions covered up child abuse and preached discrimination. More and more millennials are rejecting formal religion but seeking a spiritual sense of purpose.

It helps that Soni’s approach centers more on commonality than God.

“We’re oriented around meaning and purpose and authenticity and identity and significance,” he said. “My concern is that as students leave traditional religious congregations, they haven’t been taught how to build an intentional community of likeminded people in a way that creates empathy and compassion and a sense of belonging. That’s compounded by the fact that this is a generation that was born into technology ... . You may have 500 friends on Facebook, but what does that mean in real life?”

Around campus, he’s facilitated interfaith retreats, promoted LGBTQ Bible studies and taught courses on misunderstood religions such as Islam and Sikhism. “My programming is my pulpit,” he likes to say. After the Trump administration announced a travel ban that alienated Muslims, his phone rang nonstop. Empowered by Soni’s inclusive approach, dozens of students, professors and religious leaders rallied alongside their Muslim peers and attended a local mosque, where they joined in the midday Juma’h prayer.

“Varun does a good job of keeping us moving in the same direction,” said Dov Wagner, a rabbi at USC.

Soni, who is 42, could be mistaken for a graduate student. His hair is cut in a fade. He often teaches in jeans. He knows how to speak to a generation used to abbreviations and hashtags.

One afternoon, he walked his students through the religious history of northern India’s Punjab, where his family is from. He rolled up his sleeve to show them his Sikh kara, a delicate steel bracelet he has worn since his mother gave it to him when he was small.

“Traditionally, these are much thicker and protected one’s wrist when you went to war,” he said, attempting to mimic a sword fight with his hands. “Luckily, my days of swordplay are over.”

After class, one student came up and said he was Punjabi as well, then shyly reached out for a handshake. “Right on, Pun-ja-bis!” Soni cheered. Soni tries hard to reach everyone. As a way to include students who don’t believe in God, for instance, he hired a “humanist chaplain” to collaborate with other religious leaders on campus.

“Because of Varun, these other chaplains aren’t threatened by me,” said Bart Campolo, who uses his skills as a former pastor to guide students in a secular way. “I’m not here to attack anybody’s belief system. They realize I’m just another guy trying to help students answer life’s ultimate questions.”

St. Peter Lutheran Church

LODI — St. Peter Lutheran Church is offering Lenten services every Wednesday at 7 p.m. Special services during Holy Week include Maundy Thursday services on April 13 on 7 p.m. and Good Friday services on April 14 at 7 p.m. and Easter services on April 16 at 8 a.m. and 10:45 a.m. A free Easter egg hunt and breakfast will take place on Easter Sunday at 9:15 a.m. St. Peter Lutheran Church is located at 2400 Oxford Way. For more information call 209-333-2223.

Emanuel Lutheran Church

LODI — Celebrate Lent at Emanual Lutheran church. Palm Sunday service will take place on Sunday, April 9 at 8:15 and 11 a.m. On Wednesday, April 12 at 6 p.m. in the Social Hall, there will be an Egg Stuffing and Decorating, Pizza and Book Fair. Maundy Thursday worship will be offered on Thursday, April 13 at 7 p.m. Good Friday worship will be on Friday, April 14 at 7 p.m.

Easter Sunday services begun in Sunday, April 16 with a SONrise Celebration at 6 a.m., a pancake breakfast from 7 to 10:30 a.m. and a worship celebration at 8:15 a.m.

An Easter egg hunt will follow at 10 a.m. and the second worship celebration at 11 a.m.

Emanuel Lutheran Church is located at 1540 W. Lodi Ave.

First United Methodist Church

LODI — First United Methodist Church will be offering several special services this Lent. The April 9 Palm Sunday worship will feature a drama, “The Singing Bishop,” with a palm parade, and the Passion Story. The service begins at 9:30 a.m.

On April 13 at 6:30 p.m. the church will hold a Holy Thursday service, with Holy Communion. The message is entitled, “The Prayer of Commitment,” and the scripture is Luke 22:39-46.

The church is also hosting the Good Friday Community Worship on April 14 beginning at noon. The Lodi community, with more than a dozen congregations participating, will remember Christ’s death on the cross.

Easter worship services will take place on April 16 at 8 and 10 a.m. The message is “Look for the Living.”

The Chancel Choir will provide music. At 9 a.m. Easter Brunch will be available. A floral cross will be decorated. At 9:30 a.m. there will be an Easter Egg hunt for children. The church is located at 200 W. Oak St. in Lodi.

United Congregational Christian Church

LODI — United Congregational Christian Church will be offering the following services during Holy Week:

• Palm Sunday — Join the 2017 Confirmation Class as they help lead worship during one of most joyous Sundays of the year on April 9 at 10:20 a.m. in the sanctuary.

• Maundy Thursday worship — A beautiful and meaningful worship experience you won’t forget at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 13.

• Community wide Good Friday Worship Service — Join the Lodi Community as it gathers at noon at the church

• Easter Worship — The most important Sunday of the year for every Christian. Worship begins at 10:20 a.m. in our sanctuary, followed by an Easter Egg Hunt on United’s grounds.

The open and affirming church is open to all in the community and is located at 701 S. Hutchins St.

The Home Church

LODI — Celebrate Easter at the Home Church. It’s an amazing story: God sends His own son to earth to die a painful death so that mere humans like us can live forever in a relationship with Him. Jesus was not the only thing nailed to the cross that day. Hear Dr. Pollock’s powerful message, “What Jesus Nailed to the Cross” on Easter Sunday, April 16 at 10:30 a.m. There will be live music, a special celebration for children and free coffee and bagels after the service.

The Home Church is located at 11451 N. West Lane.

St. Francis Anglican Church

STOCKTON — St. Francis Anglican Church, which is located at 1625 N. Lincoln Street in the rear of Methodist Church in Stockton will be offering the following Holy Week services:

• Sunday, April 9 — Palm Sunday at 9:30 a.m.

• Thursday, April 13 — Maundy Thursday at 7 p.m.

• Friday, April 14 — Good Friday at 7 p.m.

• Saturday, April 15 — Great Vigil of Easter at 7 p.m.

• Sunday, April 16 — Easter Sunday at 9:30 a.m.