SAUL GONZALEZ, correspondent: With Korean-American drummers leading a line of professors, a new experiment in American religious education began this fall. This was the opening of southern California’s Claremont Lincoln University, which describes itself as America’s first interreligious school of theology, one that will train pastors, rabbis, and eventually Muslim imams all on one campus. The school’s philosophy was captured in the opening remarks of Muslim-American religious scholar Najeeba Syeed-Miller, a professor at Claremont Lincoln.

PROFESSOR NAJEEBA SYEED-MILLER: The diversity of humankind is not a curse from God. It is a sign of God’s creation, and the beauty of humanity is in our very differences.

GONZALEZ: What do you hope to accomplish here at Claremont Lincoln? What’s the grand vision?

PHILIP CLAYTON (Provost, Claremont Lincoln University): You have to get beyond the point of people defining their religions by the traditional walls.

GONZALEZ: Philip Clayton is Claremont Lincoln’s provost. He sees this school as offering an alternative to traditional religious education.

CLAYTON: When you train rabbis in one school, pastors in another, imams in another, you put them out into communities they create an “us versus them” mentality. What if we do something that’s never been done before? Let’s train them in the same classroom. Let’s let them work out their differences in their day-to-day education. When they go out into their communities you won’t find them doing the “us versus them,” but, we hope, the “we.” What that would for the face of religion in America would be staggering.

GONZALEZ: Claremont Lincoln is actually the creation of a much older institution, United Methodist-affiliated Claremont School of Theology, founded in 1885. It partnered with southern California’s Academy of Jewish Religion and the Islamic Center of Southern California to form this new school. Students attending this school can get master’s degrees in divinity, rabbinic studies, and Muslim counseling.

INSTRUCTOR: I’d like you to stand or to turn in the direction that you normally pray.

GONZALEZ: But all are required to take classes like this one that emphasize interreligious education and understanding. Many of the students feel they couldn’t get this kind of multifaith education anywhere else.

WALLY BURMAN (Student): Most of the reason I’m here is I looked at the other colleges and other programs, and it appeared they were preparing students to be leaders in the church of yesterday, where Claremont is training people to be leaders in the church of tomorrow.

GONZALEZ: This school’s ambition to train Muslim clerics is important to Valentina Khan, a Muslim-American student of Iranian descent.

VALENTINA KHAN (Student): I definitely think that we need to have is a voice that’s an American voice as Muslims. I mean, having somebody in Saudi Arabia telling us how it should be here in America is absolutely, in my opinion, not the way I’d want to be told.

GONZALEZ: However, the creation of this school has also generated some criticism.

CLAYTON: I’m actively involved in blogging and social networking, and I began to find sites that would label what we were doing as the work of the devil, and people absolutely guaranteeing the blogosphere that I was on my way to hell, so that it really drew a hostility. People felt that we were undercutting the way they defined their entire religious tradition, which is this oppositional and exclusionary approach.

GONZALEZ: However, many of the students and faculty at Claremont Lincoln don’t want to ignore the tensions and theological differences between their faiths.

SYEED-MILLER: I actually hope that there is conflict. I often say when we get together in interfaith dialogue we try to “out-nice” each other and say, “Oh, you know, you’re wonderful!” “No, you are wonderful!” If we are truly going to be conversation partners, we need to say, “Look, this is how I view your tradition.” I think we really need to get into conversations about history, because so much of what we carry in interfaith dialogue is about the negative histories that each of our communities has had with one another, so if we are not willing to go there then I don’t think any of us are going to be able to move forward.

GONZALEZ: Beyond America’s changing religious landscape, there’s another reason why Claremont went multifaith: survival. Like other schools of theology and seminaries during these tough economic times, this campus faced a declining enrollment and a tightening budget. Allowing students from other faiths to train here is one way to keep the lights on and the doors open.

CLAYTON: This is an extremely hard time for American theological schools. We could go on with a dwindling number of Methodists students, but we decided we wanted to be ahead of the curve.

GONZALEZ: Well, ahead of the curve because you had to be. I mean, you had to open up this institution to other faiths to keep your head above water.

CLAYTON: Sure, but we had a 45-year history of being edgy. We were always sort of pushing the envelope, and so we decided we would push the envelope on this one.

GONZALEZ: To help it go multifaith, this school received a $50 million grant from philanthropist David Lincoln and his wife, Joan. In their honor, the school was named after them. Clayton believes to survive more and more schools of theology and seminaries will have to adopt Claremont’s interreligous approach.

CLAYTON: We’re starting to get visits from academic deans and presidents who say, “Oh, we’ve see where you’re going. Can we talk about this new movement?”

GONZALEZ: But skepticism remains high.

DENNIS DIRKS (Dean, Talbot School of Theology): It’s fine for Claremont. It would not be good for us.

GONZALEZ: Dennis Dirks is the dean of the Talbot School of Theology in southern California, a Christian multidenominational evangelical institution. He says religious clarity, not a mixing of faiths, is essential to a religious school, arguing a multifaith approach could weaken the curriculum and anger alumni and other campus supporters.

DIRKS: We’re frequently asked, “Do you admit non-Christians here?” They want to know. They want to hold us accountable for that, so that’s something that we want to look at very carefully.

GONZALEZ: And they want to make sure that the non-Christians are not here.

DIRKS: Well, yes, not as enrolled students, because they are fearful of diffusion of the curriculum.

GONZALEZ: But do you think it’s easy for faiths to cohabitate like that in theological instruction?

DIRKS: No, I think it’s very difficult. I think there are great challenges.

GONZALEZ: However, at Claremont they think the future is on their side in an increasingly multifaith America.

CLASSROOM SPEAKER: Some of us are looking in a Jewish direction. Some of us are looking in a Muslim direction. Some are looking in a Christian direction. And yet we are all looking in a God direction.

GONZALEZ: Beyond Christians, Jews, and Muslims, administrators here are already talking about enrolling Jains, Buddhists, and Hindus.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Saul Gonzalez in Los Angeles.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Several studies recently have addressed the religious interest, or lack of it, of young adults. We wondered how religion is faring on college campuses. Lucky Severson visited Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island to find out.

LUCKY SEVERSON: Catholic Mass in the Manning Chapel at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. There are many other things these students could be doing on a bright Sunday morning, but they are here, trying to connect to a higher power, or maybe just to themselves, and asking for help for others.

UNIDENTIFIED STUDENT (praying): For my friend who’s been diagnosed with a brain tumor and for her family, we pray to the Lord.

STUDENTS (responding in unison): Lord, hear our prayer.

SEVERSON: The Protestant service that morning was conducted by Reverend Janet Cooper Nelson, Brown’s chief chaplain.

At Brown, like most universities, you can find almost any religion or no religion at all. But you will also discover an increasing number of students who are searching for some sort of spirituality in their lives.

Reverend JANET COOPER NELSON (University Chaplain, Brown University): If you took a group of Brown students and did what we call a forced choice exercise — go to one end of the room if you are religious, go to the other end of the room if you are spiritual — two thirds of the students would be on the spiritual end. But the kids on the religious end would say, “Well, I’m not so sure about whether you could be spiritual if you are not religious somehow.”

LAURA BROWN-LAVOIE (Student, Brown University): There was something that Confucius was trying to get to about our inner humanity or something.

SEVERSON: Laura Brown-Lavoie is searching in a class on Chinese religions. She was raised in a Unitarian Universalist church.

Ms. BROWN-LAVOIE: It’s hard for a lot of people in my generation raised in that church, because we never really started with a mystical thing, and so I’m just getting to it now where I’m finding paths to mysticism on my own.

SEVERSON: Andrew Mathis is a sophomore who grew up a Catholic, but at Brown he was drawn to Buddhism and the art of Chinese lion dancing.

ANDREW MATHIS (Student, Brown University): I think the best thing about Buddhism is for every — not belief; for every idea that is presented in Buddhism there’s a clause: “Just don’t take this because somebody said so or you’ve read it, but do it because you experiment with it. You incorporate it into your life, and you know this is true.”

SEVERSON: Rabbi Alan Flam is a chaplain who heads the school’s Center for Public Service. He says students are searching for spirituality through public service.

Rabbi ALAN FLAM (Swearer Center for Public Service, Brown University): I also think the language of social justice is speaking more and more to students — that they want to live out their convictions not necessarily from a religious doctrine but from a commitment to other people and the world. And I’m not certain our institutions have responded as nimbly as they should to some of those challenges.

SEVERSON: Senior Danyel Currie thinks too many churches are missing the boat.

Ms. DANYEL CURRIE (Student, Brown Univeristy): I think it’s been a great failure of the church to basically isolate certain issues in order divide people into a kind of us versus them. There are so many other things the Bible talks about, you know, that are relevant, that people need to know about. People need to know that God cares about social justice.

SEVERSON: Danyel plans to attend divinity school after she graduates. She says her faith has grown much stronger because she has had to defend it, to others and herself.

Ms. CURRIE: First semester I’m coming here, there’s all these philosophical arguments against the existence of God, and I can’t defend any single one of them. The professor is, you know, atheist, and I’m just kind of like, “God, I don’t know, but at the end of the day I still believe you’re real.”

Rev. NELSON: One of the things in the university we are endlessly trying to say is your spiritual tradition, the literatures of your tradition, have to be interrogated. Not all my clergy colleagues agree with me about that. Some people think nope, the Bible said it, I believe it, that’s all there is to it.

Ms. CURRIE: I had to learn that it was OK to approach the Bible and approach God in a very intellectual way and to say this doesn’t make sense, but that doesn’t mean that, you know, I can’t be a Christian anymore.

SEVERSON: Searching is encouraged here. So is questioning, even for students like Nate Johnson, son of missionaries, who felt he had to defend his faith when he first got here.

NATE JOHNSON (Student, Brown University): “This kid’s far out. He’s really in the midst of the right-wing evangelical conspiracy.” So it’s pretty crazy. Then they are shocked and then they are, like, “OK, OK, I need to respect his viewpoint.” Sometimes I feel am I talking about my faith too much? Am I annoying people? A lot more times I feel like I’m not talking enough because I don’t want people to not like me.

SEVERSON: Nate belongs to the Brown Christian Fellowship. He says as a born-again Christian he is often asked his view on gay marriage.

Mr. JOHNSON: I would say that I probably don’t attach as much importance to it as a political issue as my parent’s generation, because I see it in a different light. I still don’t believe that homosexuality is in accordance with God’s plan, but I also see that there’s a lot of love and compassion that God wants us to have.

SEVERSON: Every Thursday night there’s an interfaith supper at Reverend Nelson’s house. It’s a long-standing tradition, holding true to the reason Brown was founded. Back then, other Ivy League schools limited enrollment to specific denominations. Brown was Baptist, but welcomed students of all religious persuasions.

Yael Richardson, a Jew, and Atena Asiaii, a Muslim, roomed together at Interfaith House, a dorm that fosters interfaith dialogue. These two women from very different religious backgrounds became very close friends.

YAEL RICHARDSON (Student, Brown University): If I perchance would have a frustration with my religious community, with the Jewish community around here, then I could voice them to Atena and she would totally understand, because she experiences very similar things.

ATENA ASIAII (Student, Brown University): We had a conversation before about Muslim women leading prayer and Jewish women wanting to lead services as well, and it’s just nice to have someone to talk to who is going through that from a different perspective.

SEVERSON: Brown employs a full-time multifaith staff of five chaplains and is one of the few universities with a Muslim chaplain, Rumee Ahmed.

Reverend RUMEE AHMED (Chaplain, Brown University): I find that students are questioning their beliefs before they even get into the university, and the university is the opportunity for them to express those doubts.

SEVERSON: Noor Najeeb has had plenty of doubts and lots of questions, especially since 9/11. Noor is at a gathering breaking the fast during Ramadan.

NOOR SHEKH NAJEEB (Student, Brown University): If I didn’t want to be Muslim, I could just float through life not having these issues, not having to be questioned, not having to defend myself and my beliefs on a constant basis. But at the same time that defense — not really defense, that questioning makes you question yourself, and in questioning yourself you realize your identity.

SEVERSON: It’s not that there aren’t skeptics and atheists at Brown, but even those students, like Sarah Goldstein, seem to draw a distinction between religion and spirituality.

SARAH GOLDSTEIN (Student, Brown University): For a lot of people, maybe a belief in God is something that like sort of fills you up and like overwhelms you in a certain sense. And I feel, like, I get that feeling from others things, like, call it spirituality, I don’t know.

SEVERSON: Reverend Nelson is concerned that more and more students will be skeptical of organized religion if religious institutions don’t start dealing with more relevant issues.

Rev. NELSON: We are going to be faced with everything from stem cell decisions to genetic engineering to evolutionary questions to moral questions in this society about whether there should or shouldn’t be torture.

SEVERSON: You think that churches ought to be dealing with issues like that?

Rev. NELSON: I think they must deal with them, and when they don’t, students then say religion is inadequate. Spirituality is where I belong. And they’re right if religion is not about those issues that are framing a human life.

SEVERSON: If Brown students are typical, and most surveys show they are, the good news is that today’s college kids are resolved to find something to believe in and to make the world a more just place.

For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Lucky Severson at Brown University.