Joshua Zhang, Contributing Photographer

Approximately 100 Christian and non-Christian students gathered in Marsh Lecture Hall on Dec. 1 for Yahweh Night, a worship night designed to celebrate and bring together students of different cultures.

Yahweh Night, which was first held at Yale in the spring of 2022, has the goal of gathering people from different nations, tribes and tongues to worship. The event featured songs performed in languages including Korean, Spanish and Hebrew, among others. 

“The heart [of the event] is to reflect God more fully, [showing] that he is a God over all people, of so many different cultures and so many different languages,” Jessica Romero ’23 said.

Romero organized the event alongside Lydia Lee ’23. Romero is also part of the leadership team of Chi Alpha, a Christian fellowship on campus.

Yahweh Night originated at the University of Virginia in 2017. Romero, who is from Virginia, attended the event at UVA during her gap semester and felt very moved by it. She was encouraged to see a space where her Latina culture was represented in the context of her faith — something that she hadn’t experienced yet at Yale. The experience motivated her to plan the first Yahweh Night at Yale.

This year, Romero, along with Lee, began planning Yahweh Night in October. She also invited many members of the wider Christian community to help her put together the event. Students across multiple Christian groups on campus — including Chi Alpha, Yale Students for Christ, Black Church at Yale, United Church of Westville and Christian Union — attended and supported the event.

During the planning of the worship night, students who were interested could choose a selection of songs or forms of worship that they wanted to include in the set. They then practiced on their own before the night of the event.

When Yahweh Night arrived, students worshiped along to nearly two dozen songs, which were arranged into ten different sets. The students danced, sang and prayed. At one point, a conga line even began to form while students sang together.

“We’re used to singing, like guitar and American songs,” Han Choi ’24 said. “But worship comes in many different ways and forms, like if you go to different nations in Africa [or] Latin America, they worship with a lot of different styles and forms.”

Choi belongs to UCW, a Christian fellowship on campus that also functions as a church. He played guitar during parts of the night and also worshiped with the student body present.

Sua Lee ’26 was also part of the organizing team that made Yahweh Night possible. Lee is a member of UCW and was a vocalist for a few of the songs.

“We were praying for this … to be an event where God really moves, and I really believe that his presence was here with us today,” Lee said.

She emphasized that inviting friends and non-Christians to the event was an important part of the mission because it would allow people from all cultures and backgrounds to feel comfortable in the space.

Iman Dancy ’23 told the News that Yahweh Night was undoubtedly “the highlight of her entire Yale experience.”

Dancy belongs to Chi Alpha, and she attended Yahweh Night during the last academic year as well. For Dancy, the event holds a special meaning as it allows her to celebrate the uniqueness of her own culture.

“The expressed goal is to … get a lot of people to sing in their mother tongues and also let people see languages that they’ve never even encountered before,” Dancy said. “But now they’re praising God in those languages, so it was just so incredibly moving.”

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