Separate ways: UNLV Interfaith Center is breaking up

Stacy J. Willis

Wednesday, July 24, 2002 | 11:04 a.m.

The Rev. Bartholomew Hutcherson calls the end "inevitable."

For three decades the UNLV Interfaith Student Center was a place where different religious groups -- Catholics, Protestants and Jews -- worked together to promote common values.

But the center's focus on unity is collapsing.

The Protestants have left campus. The Catholics want to demolish the center, which sits on diocese-owned property inside the University of Nevada, Las Vegas campus, and build a Catholic church. Jewish leaders are keeping an eye on fund-raising prospects to ensure that the Hillel organization stays on campus -- somewhere.

Less than a year after Sept. 11's interfaith outpouring, the campus' cooperative religious program is being replaced by an emphasis on building individual religious identities.

"I'm very concerned that Catholic students don't get a strong sense of their Catholic identity. I want my students to look out of their dorm rooms and see a Catholic center, not an Interfaith Student Center," said Hutcherson, a priest who leads the Catholic campus ministry.

"There is a strong feeling among Catholics that we've done a poor job of educating young Catholics. We have a responsibility to do a good job of helping students to live out their Catholic identities."

Catholicism's image has suffered as a result of widespread allegations of sexual abuse this year, and Hutcherson said it is important to reinforce positive elements of the faith. In that vein, he wants to be free to focus on elements of Catholicism that Protestants and Jews don't share.

"In Catholicism, there's a real sacramental identity," Hutcherson said. "As Catholics we try to find the sacred and the holy in symbolic places. ... We want those symbols to be displayed prominently, and in an interfaith environment, that's difficult.

"I put the crucifix up on Sundays and have to take it down and put it in the closet at the end of the day, and it's like putting my identity in the closet."

The Interfaith Center was born out of a nationwide social movement toward intercultural education in the 1960s and '70s. The land the center sits on was was donated to the church by a Catholic family in 1962, and was later surrounded by the growing campus.

In 1972, UNLV administrators, like administrators on campuses nationwide at the time, approached religious leaders in the Jewish, Catholic and Protestant faiths about building a campus interfaith center.

At the time, there were fewer than 2,000 UNLV students and, Hutcherson said, using the Catholic land "was the most logical way for all three (religious) groups to have a facility to serve their relatively small populations."

Each of the three groups paid one-third of overhead costs while they occupied the building -- using donations from area congregations.

Inside the small building are a kitchen, a carpeted conversation pit, and offices. In its 30 years, the center has hosted hundreds of programs that encouraged understanding of different faiths -- Protestants were invited to Jewish seder dinners, and speakers such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Archbishop Desmond Tutu spoke to a full house.

"The idea of the center was to nourish students who want to work with other faith traditions and share their understanding of God and learn how others experience religion," said the Rev. Jerry Blankinship, a Methodist who was a co-founder of the center.

But in recent years, the Protestant group -- made up of Methodists, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Disciples of Christ and the members of the United Church of Christ -- has been struggling to come up with the rent -- about $10,000 per year.

In a growing community such as Las Vegas, religious leaders often want to devote resources to programs that result in membership increases.

Protestant leaders spoke out as early as 1999 saying they were concerned that they weren't reaching students -- "We are trying to be effective, and that hasn't been the case at interfaith center," Methodist Rev. David Devereaux told the Sun in 1999.

In May of this year, the Protestants announced they were moving out of the center.

"The priority today is to establish new congregations," Blankinship said. "And the center seems not to be a priority."

Blankinship said most of the interfaith student centers set up in the 1970s on campuses nationwide have since disbanded -- leaving UNLV as one of few such on-campus interfaith buildings.

Eve Williams Batz, Methodist campus minister who was involved in the Interfaith Student Center, said ecumenical work is still important, but that the Protestants will carry out their mission off-campus.

"One of the things we did enjoy in the past was the opportunity to interact with different faiths. But for whatever reason, the three different groups started to be less interested in that sort of thing," said Batz, who works for University United Methodist Church. Her church, which is located across Maryland Parkway from UNLV, will host all of the Protestants in a campus ministry this fall.

"It would be a shame if we stopped our multi-denominational experience. There are a lot students out there who need a spiritual place, and may not consider themselves to be a part of one denomination," Batz said.

"You know it if you grew up Catholic. You know if you grew up Jewish. But a lot of Protestants don't have that identity."

The Jewish student organization, Hillel, plans to stay in the building at least a few more months, according to Melanie Greenberg, executive director of Hillel. She said she was uncertain where Hillel would eventually relocate.

"This all came about fairly recently. We think the interfaith building's purpose 30 years ago was very important, and I still think it's important today. But I understand that Father Bart (Hutcherson) has to do what he feels is important for Catholic students," Greenberg said. "But we would like to stay here as long as we can."

Hutcherson has begun presenting to Las Vegas Catholics a fund-raising video that features young Catholics talking about the need for an all-Catholic Newman Center on the property -- and proposes to demolish the old center and replace it with a Catholic church and meeting center.

Hutcherson said the break-up of the threesome was "coming for a long time," and at first, caused tension between the three groups.

"Initially there was a lot of hand-wringing around here about what we are all going to do," Hutcherson said.

But, he said, he asked UNLV President Carol Harter for help setting up an Interfaith Council on campus that would include leaders from faiths other than the three that were housed in the Interfaith Student Center. With Harter's approval, he plans to work with UNLV's student services department to create that council to carry out interfaith programs that once took place at the center.

"It's a growth opportunity for everybody," Hutcherson said."