Dawn Kim

Chris Freimuth DIV ’25, felt bamboozled when he first began his studies at Yale Divinity School in 2022. 

Freimuth, who identifies as “spiritual but not religious” and an interfaith thinker, came to the Yale Divinity School to study how spirituality plays out in different traditions. While he entered thinking YDS was more interfaith, he concluded that YDS is at its core Christian, but it does its best to accommodate other religious traditions. 

“Know what you’re signing up for,” Freimuth says to non-Christians entering YDS.

Yale Divinity School’s mission statement states that while the school is “traditionally and primarily Christian in character,” it “welcomes people of all faiths and no faiths.” Yet non-Christian students say they have had mixed experiences there. 

While some have felt celebrated, others have felt misled and have even switched their programs to graduate sooner. Some knew what they were signing up for, while others expected that YDS would give them the pluralistic religious education they sought.

YDS Dean Gregory Sterling acknowledged some of the concerns raised by non-Christian students and said that the school had taken steps to address them. However, he believes that the school should not change its historically Christian nature.

“The fact of the matter is we have students here who believe that humans and dinosaurs occupied the Earth at the same time, and we have students who do not believe in a deity,” said Sarah Drummond, dean of Andover Newton Seminary affiliated with YDS. 

The News talked to current and former students and administrators at Yale Divinity School about the experiences of students who may not fall into the mainstream of Christianity at a school that is unapologetically Christian.

“Anything but just Christian”: Finding community in being non-Christian at YDS

Along with 30 of his peers, Freimuth penned a letter to the Divinity School administration in May 2023 with action items for how YDS can better include people of “all faiths and no faiths” without compromising the school’s identity as Christian in nature. The letter claims that those who do not fall into the school’s mainline Protestantism are “routinely offered only a limited portion of the institution’s promised resources and goodwill.”

The letter was penned after many meetings of the group Anything but just Christian, or ABjC, composed of Christian and non-Christian students who believe that the Divinity School needed to improve its religious diversity. The letter’s signatories encouraged YDS to support non-Christian students through interfaith professional development, more inclusive rituals and worship, and more diverse academic requirements. 

The letter anonymously quotes students in ABjC meetings held over the course of the 2022-23 school year.

“It feels as though non-Christians are a threat to the Christian way here, rather than a welcome and enriching component,” one student wrote. Another wrote, “We were accepted into this institution as non-Christians, and then not given a place at the table when we arrived. Why were our applications accepted if our actual personhood isn’t?”

“Isn’t Unitarian Universalism just a watered-down version of the United Church of Christ?” Alice, another member of ABjC, recalled being asked by a fellow MDiv student, as quoted by the letter. Alice requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation and will be referred to by the pseudonym. While the student made this statement without bad intent, it felt degrading, she said. 

The letter: a statement or a conversation?

The signatories explained that the letter was not intended to be a petition or list of demands but rather a way to voice concerns about student experiences.

“I did not respond because I didn’t take it as an invitation to respond,” YDS Dean Gregory Sterling said of the letter. This was because it was sent out on the eve of 2023 Commencement when many of the letter’s signatories graduated from the school, he explained. 

In his view, the students who wrote that letter had strong opinions, but many never bothered to sit and meet with him. 

Tasha Brownfield DIV ’23, one of ABjC’s founders, said that ABjC submitted the letter to Dear Theo, a platform that connects the YDS community, well in advance but that it was not published through the Office of Student Affairs until the night before commencement. 

Brownfield emphasized that for the group, the letter was always a way to spark a conversation.

“It was never to fight. … This was a letter of promise and not malice,” Brownfield wrote to the News. “I hope that the institution will one day respond to this letter and the pains current students are still facing.”

While Brownfield agreed that the timing of the letter’s release was not ideal, she added that it does not normally take so long for a DearTheo letter to be published and she is unsure why the delay occurred. According to Brownfield, “This was always a letter for conversation.” 

Sterling acknowledged that the letter raised some good points. One way he has tried to respond is by incorporating more non-Christians in chapel services. Some student requests, however, cross a line, he believes. 

“One group of students asked if they could have a witch service for witches in the chapel,” said Sterling. “And I said no because we have some students who would feel like the chapel had been desecrated and they’d never be able to worship there again.”

The school is currently revising its Master of Divinity, or MDiv, program, which is one request of the students in their letter. With the curriculum changes, the program will still be set up for Christian ministry but won’t be “as constrictive as it was,” Sterling said. Students with the MDiv degree will be able to go into fields such as chaplaincy, which is more interfaith and does not require solely Christian knowledge. 

Freimuth said that most of the administrators he has met with, including Sterling, have wanted to help. 

“The school is behind the curve for a lot of this stuff, but they’re moving in the right direction,” said Freimuth.

Positive experiences at YDS even as a non-Christian student

Despite the letter, not all non-Christian students have had negative experiences at YDS. 

Sunny McMillan DIV ’25 who identifies as “spiritual but not religious” had attended ABjC meetings, but said she could not sign onto the letter because she did not feel that it correctly represented her experience. 

“I don’t think that they were wrong. I think we just had different experiences given what our expectations were coming in,” McMillan said. “I had no expectations that they were going to accommodate me. I came in, and I assumed the risk.”

Some, like Ora Weinbach DIV ’22, an Orthodox Jew, even preferred YDS’s religious stance, which made her choose Yale over a multifaith Harvard Divinity School.

“Everyone was very focused on what made everybody the same,” Weinbach said of Harvard’s emphasis on religious pluralism. To her, Harvard Divinity School did not feel like a place where people had the same kind of religious fervor and conviction. 

Weinbach shared that her religious needs were accommodated at Yale, whether that meant missing class for Jewish holidays or getting out of the Christian ethics course requirement for the degree and instead studying Jewish ethics.

While daily chapel is a big part of life at the Divinity School, it was important to her not to participate in a service that was not Jewish. Nonetheless, she used other work she had done for her homiletics class to qualify for and win the preaching award at graduation.

“The school was interested in giving that prominent award to somebody who was not Christian,” Weinbach said. “That’s a very real way in which I was not penalized for my commitments to my religious beliefs.”

“Well, what if it was your ritual?”: Non-Christian ritual in Marquand Chapel

Alice did not have positive experiences with the daily chapel in Marquand. 

She said the administration made one token effort when it allowed Unitarian Universalist students to hold a service in the chapel. Still, the students had to plan it under “pretty strict guidance,” Alice said.

According to Alice, the only significant ritual of a Unitarian Universalist service is the chalice lighting — but the YDS administrators coordinating the service told them at the last minute that they were going to have to use an electronic chalice because they were not letting candles into Marquand anymore. 

“It would be sacrilegious to have chalice lighting with a plastic electronic candle,” Alice said. “When I complained about it to several people, many of my Christian peers’ response was, does that really matter? And I’m like, well, what if it was your ritual?”

“I don’t think we want to be Harvard Divinity School:” Yale’s unique institutional identity  

Andover Newton Seminary Dean Drummond and YDS Dean Sterling both emphasized that bringing people together across religious differences is not easy. 

Drummond said that allowing people with different religious beliefs to talk with each other is part of the preparation for religious leadership. 

She said it’s important to have compassion for how frustrating it can be to have assumptions made about you. Yet for her, it is still crucial to understand everyone’s point of view. 

“The way we describe that in interreligious dialogue is iron sharpening iron,” she said quoting Proverbs 27:17. “Having to stand your ground in a religious interface, not among movements within a tradition, but across traditions, having to articulate to a person who doesn’t share our views is an opportunity to clarify our views.” 

Weinbach appreciated being in a space with others who did not share her tradition. 

When the Admissions Office would connect her with prospective Jewish students, she would always tell them that if they wanted to have a positive experience, they needed to understand that YDS is a Christian school. If they did not want that, they should go to Harvard.

“If you are comfortable being the only Jew in the room — which I very much am, but not everybody is — then you can come here and have an amazing time,” Weinbach said. “But you can’t go to an institution with the intention of changing [its] foundational identity.” 

Dean Sterling emphasized that the school has always welcomed students of different backgrounds but it is set up from a Christian perspective. He does not expect that to change. 

“There’s a difference between having that perspective represented and spoken about and setting up programs for a particular perspective,” said Sterling.

Alice remembered a conversation with William Goettler, associate dean for ministerial and social leadership, who told her that if she did not like it at Yale, she should transfer to Harvard which is a more pluralistic school. Goettler referred the News to Sterling for comment.

“If somebody wants to be a part of a community like this, they will certainly be embraced,” Sterling said. “But I don’t think we want to be Harvard Divinity School. It would mean forfeiting our entire history. And why would we do that?” 

Drummond explained that when the two schools were founded, a theological split occurred about how a person knows God’s nature. Harvard comes from a more intellectual perspective and has always been more pluralistic while Yale takes a more spiritual perspective which does not place as much of an emphasis on pluralism.  

Admitting non-Christian students

Esther Levy DIV ’24 felt that YDS was such a hostile environment that she switched from the MDiv to the Master of Arts in Religion, or MAR, just to get out as soon as possible. Last April, she published an op-ed in the News explaining her decision. 

“YDS, live by your purported values. Change the curriculum. Hire professors who will teach Jewish history. Take steps to combat antisemitism. Be ‘welcoming’ and ‘value the worth and dignity’ of your Jewish students. Or, at the very least, stop admitting Jews,” she wrote. 

Alice, similarly, said she was misled in coming to Yale — and that there was a general feeling among non-Christian students that they were recruited and admitted to diversify the educational experience of the Christian students at the school. In her view, the quality of the non-Christian students’ education was not being considered. 

Dean Sterling, on the other hand, felt that the students who signed onto the 2023 letter — Levy among them — were antagonistic about Christianity. 

“They don’t say that in their application. If they said that, we wouldn’t accept them,” said Sterling. 

When asked whether he would consider including a question about applicants’ relationships with Christianity in the application, he said that he would not, as that “begins to sound sectarian.”

Sterling said that the school is transparent about being “unapologetically Christian” but still embraces many different faiths. He offered the analogy of someone who might not be American but comes to an American law school and expects to be taught the law of their country of origin.

“I think there’s a difference between welcoming people and then people wanting to change the basic structure, and that I’m not willing to do,” said Sterling.

“A lot of missteps”: Conversations with Dean Sterling

In describing his own experiences of being in a faith space that was not his own, Sterling described the time he spent in Jerusalem as a visiting professor at Hebrew University. 

Every Friday night, he attended synagogue even though he is not Jewish. While it caused some of the people there a little consternation, he said, he felt embraced and welcomed in the space. Levy said that Sterling would often tell her this story when she met with him about her struggles.

 “He wanted me to have been able to have that at YDS. I think there’s just a lot of missteps there,” said Levy.

After switching from the MDiv to the MAR and graduating, Levy is now training to become a chaplain at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City.

Dean Drummond believes that religious leaders must be prepared to converse with people who disagree with them. She thinks that helping students understand one another despite religious differences is part of YDS’s responsibility. 

For her students, seeking answers to their questions will come in fulfilling the quote from Proverbs: “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another.” To her, that is the essence of religious education.