Photo courtesy of Butler University
MORGAN SKERIES | STAFF REPORTER | mskeries@butler.edu
The Center for Faith and Vocation has a variety of different religious communities within it, many of which celebrate the holiday season.
The CFV is the center of community for religious life on campus and stays neutral when it comes to the holidays, in order to respect the many religious groups that make up the community.
“Most of the holiday season is carried out by the religious groups themselves,” CFV director Daniel Meyers said. “The CFV doesn’t explicitly do holiday things at the house because not everyone is celebrating at this time of the year. However, occasionally we partner with groups and try to be very present and attend all the events put on.”
The Student Government Association runs the holiday events held at the CFV, and each religious group has a student leadership role, a faculty adviser and a community advisor.
“An intentional part of how we see ourselves acting on campus is to be a home base to all our groups,” Meyers said. “The [religious] groups themselves are autonomous, student led and self running.”
The main groups celebrating right now are the Jewish community and the various Christian communities.
A Hanukkah party was put on by the Butler Hillel community on Sunday, Dec. 4.
Amanda Rosenfeld is the student president of Butler Hillel and took part in organizing the event.
“Usually many Jewish students get homesick around this time because many of us don’t get to go home for the holidays,” Rosenfeld said. “We always celebrate Hanukkah and have a party, but this year it was much bigger. We lit a menorah and had a little service too.”
Next semester, the Hillel community is going to try and reach out to more students, Rosenfeld said.
“Some of the other groups are much larger, so we bring a different perspective,” Rosenfeld said. “We do as many events as we can with the CFV to bring light to the Jewish community. We’re going to start to be more proactive to make the group more known on campus.”
The Butler Catholic Community will host an event for the holidays and throw a Christmas party on Saturday, Dec. 10.
Elaine Miller, president of the student leadership team for Butler’s Catholic Community, leads discussions with other team leaders and plans social and spiritual events.
“Usually we play games and bring food [at the Christmas party],
Miller said. “It’s way more casual than what we usually do.”
The Butler Catholic Community will also host midnight mass next Sunday, 10 p.m. to 12 p.m. in Robertson Hall. Caroling takes place beforehand.
Miller is thankful that the CFV exists.
“It’s a really open community and we have programs to encourage students to show up with questions and their doubts; we don’t tell people they’re wrong which really feeds into the CFV’s mentality.” Miller said, “It’s an opportunity to live out their religions. It’s nice to have that environment.”
All CFV events are open to all students in the Butler community, regardless of religious affiliation.
Any religious group holding an event is open to the Butler community.
