Bottom: Catherine Hambleton (seated in rear under the double doorknobs) says attending weekly meetings of Christianity Happening in Living Life (CHILL) helps her relax and appreciate what she has. The Rev. Michael Ebner (at left) shares food and a discussion of Christianity on campus.

Practicing by choice
Students make their own choices about their religious activity at the academy. “Students must be able to practice religion in a way that reflects them, not necessarily their parents,” says Kominsky, who concurrently serves as rabbi of Temple Emanuel of the Merrimack Valley in Lowell, Mass. Often when Jewish parents first bring their son or daughter to campus, they ask the rabbi how he’s going to make sure their child comes to services. His reply: “I won’t. That’s what being away at school means. I will make sure the welcome mat is out and the lights are on, but the student has to make the choice about his or her commitment and involvement on campus.”

For students who choose to become spiritually involved, the environment is enriching and supportive. Amanda L. Senatore ’04 of Andover, president of the Catholic Student Fellowship (CSF) and a coordinator of the Andover Interfaith Round Table, says she is “definitely more active religiously” since becoming a day student at PA four years ago. “I came to Mass in the chapel during ninth grade and discovered it was directed toward young people,” she says. “It’s great to have the focus on us.” More than 100 students attend one of the two Masses celebrated each Sunday when school is in session; often parents and local residents join them. Senatore celebrated her confirmation at PA as an upper, although the certificate came from her home parish, St. Augustine’s in Andover.

CSF has hosted speakers on campus, with topics ranging from the current state of the Catholic Church to being gay and Catholic. On All-Saints’ Day, the organization invited Exeter’s Catholic students to a gathering at the Log Cabin. Off-campus visits to Masses in various locations have included celebrating Mass with cloistered monks and nuns.

“It’s wonderful to have our own friar on campus,” says Senatore. Nahoe, who prefers to be called Father Francisco in the tradition of his religious order, was a member of Fidelio Society and the Cantata Choir as a PA student. Now, he has reintroduced Gregorian chant to the ordinary of the Mass at PA and initiated saying the rosary before dinner when CSF meets Tuesday evenings in Commons.

Feeding body and spirit
The campus religious organizations recognize that food is spiritual, too, and many of their events feed the body, as well as the mind and spirit. CSF holds movie nights with pizza. When the United Muslim Associ-ation held an Iftar—a gathering to break the fast of Ramadan—the Blue Room in Commons was filled with students who wanted to taste baklava from Saudi Arabia, samosas from Pakistan and other dishes from the Muslim world. Following Friday night services, Jewish students hold an oneg Shabbat—a collation featuring traditional braided bread, or challah, and cookies brought from a kosher bakery in Brookline, Mass., by Kominsky. Protestant students enjoy a fellowship brunch Sundays in the chapel held between the Protestant Communion service and the service of the school organization Christianity Happening in Living Life (CHILL).

Many other students come from secular environments or are questioning the religious practices of their parents. “The interfaith ministry is basically a safety net for all those students who haven’t really given up religion,” says Ebner. “Maybe they’ve given up a particular tradition of their parents, but they’re still on a journey. They explore and question their faith or lack of faith. The chaplaincy becomes critical for keeping those avenues of communication and thought alive.”

Tyler W. Hill ’05 of Atlanta, Ga., comes from a Protestant background. His mother belongs to an African Methodist Episcopal church and his father is Episcopalian; some extended family members are observant and others are not. A board member of CHILL, Hill says students come from a wide range of Protestant backgrounds and don’t want the organization and services to reflect one set of beliefs. “Diversity puts Protestantism into perspective,” he says. Meeting every other Tuesday for discussions of campus life and spiritual issues affecting students, CHILL is “a way to get away from stress, to relax and to express religious belief,” says Hill, who also studies piano and organ with school organist Carolyn D. Skelton.

Music, an important component of campus spiritual life, has been ably provided for 32 years by Skelton. Originally hired to perform at Protestant services, she began playing for Catholic Mass with the advent of the tripartite chaplaincy. Currently, the rich tones of the Cochran Chapel organ played by Skelton also can be heard at all-school meetings and special observances, and she performed a recital in November to a nearly full chapel.

No longer only Protestant
The tripartite chaplaincy grew out of a committee formed by Headmaster Theodore R. Sizer in the mid-1970s to investigate the religious life of the school and to make recommendations concerning the continuing ministry. “They realized the school was no longer a Protestant community,” says the Rev. Philip Zaeder, former Protestant chaplain. Vincent Avery, a former priest who is currently dean of studies, was named the first Roman Catholic chaplain in 1976. In winter 1977, Everett Gendler, then rabbi of Temple Emanuel in Lowell, became PA’s first Jewish chaplain. In fall 1977, the Rev. Thomas Hennigan, an Augustinian friar and Roman Catholic priest, replaced Avery as Catholic chaplain, and that same year Zaeder came as Protestant chaplain.

“Starting with a simplistic view of honoring particular traditions, the chaplaincy has grown to encompass the entire spiritual life of the campus, both from particular traditions and from secular non-religious traditions,” says Ebner, who became Protestant chaplain in 1995, when Zaeder became dean of faculty. Ebner also serves as adviser to the Hindu Student Fellowship, United Muslim Association, Andover Interfaith Round Table and CHILL.
The newest member of the chaplaincy, Fr. Francisco, has been a Franciscan for 20 years. He became Andover’s Roman Catholic chaplain in fall 2003 following positions as a teacher at Bishop Montgomery High School in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, a chaplain to the Maria Regina Korean Youth Apostolate of Gardena, Calif., and an announcer for St. Joseph Catholic Radio in Orange County, Calif.

The chaplaincy’s lifelong influence
While an Andover student in the late ’70s, Nahoe took a course on Jewish mysticism with Rabbi Gendler, who urged him also
to learn about Catholic mystics. “The rabbi was the first person who connected me significantly to St. Francis of Assisi, and today I’m a Franciscan,” says Fr. Francisco. “There’s no question that the tremendous respect all three chaplains had for my Catholic tradition reaffirmed my identity as a Catholic in what is sometimes a very stridently secular environment.”

Gendler, an emeritus faculty member, and his wife, Mary, a photographer, are spending the winter with the Tibetan exile community of Dharamsala, India, where they are teaching strategic non-violence (the topic of one of his Andover courses) to Tibetan refugees. Mary’s photograph of her husband blessing the Dalai Lama hangs in the Baldwin Cloister of Cochran Chapel.
Today’s students continue to talk about the influence the chaplains have on them. Omar J. Siddiqi ’05, a Muslim student from Salem, N.H., made a guest appearance on the inaugural episode of the “Spirit and Flesh” show, hosted by Fr. Francisco on WPAA, Andover’s student radio station. Siddiqi praises the support given to the United Muslim Association by the chaplains and the librarians at Oliver Wendell Holmes Library, who provided a marble staircase in a little-used section of the library as a place where Muslim students may gather to pray. The students brought in prayer rugs and decorated the walls with posters containing calligraphy of common prayers. At least eight students pray together there twice a day; most pray individually in their dorm rooms during the three other times of daily prayer. “In our religion everyone has to know how to pray and lead prayers. It requires some confidence, and we instill that in each other,” says Siddiqi.

K. Arsalaan Ahmed ’04 says his additional daily prayers at his home in Reading, Mass. “My Muslim religious observance is not different from my parents’,” he says. “I didn’t make a conscious decision; it just happened.” He feels supported in his beliefs at the academy, adding that, because History 100 includes one term of Islamic history, “many of the kids know things about Islam that some Muslims don’t know.”

Central figures in campus life
While the tripartite chaplaincy might have been defined originally as three people hired to do very specific tasks for specific groups, this idea outgrew itself quickly. In actuality, the chaplains always have contributed to many other aspects of campus and residential life. Ebner also serves as director of alumni affairs and a house counselor, while Fr. Francisco teaches classes as a member of the English department faculty. The chaplains are central figures and a spiritual presence at all-school meetings, commencement and opening of school activities. They help to create celebrations on Memorial Day, Veterans Day and special observances and also serve on the crisis management team. “We often are approached by faculty members with questions they want our angle on,” says Kominsky. “That’s part of who we are—a resource.”

Few people realize that Andover’s active Community Service program—in which more than 700 students participate each year—grew out of the chaplaincy. Programs such as the Walk for Hunger, Oxfam, the spring break community service trip and PALS were first brought to campus by the chaplains, who are still actively involved in them today. Ebner, who serves on the Community Service Advisory Board, led two summer community service trips to the Dominican Republic and several student-faculty trips over spring break to Johns Island, S.C., to refurbish homes in a low-income community. PA’s Protestant and Catholic communities organized two clothing and fund drives for earthquake victims in Afghanistan and Turkey. The chaplains often take the lead in such spontaneous events.