Blessings for Your Students: Prayers for Interfaith Communities in Higher Education

Janet Fuller is a nationally recognized model for interfaith engagement, who has served three academic communities as chaplain for 40 years. She was the University Chaplain and Dean of Multifaith Engagement at Elon University for a decade, during which she instituted an annual student-led interfaith conference to empower students from multiple institutions to share their diverse traditions and worldviews. She has twice served as president of the National Association of College and University Chaplains, and presided over its merger with the Association of Chaplaincy and Spiritual Life in Higher Education. Born in Lebanon to missionary parents, Fuller has spent her life bringing religious, spiritual, and secular communities into conversation with one another. She lives in Roanoke, Virginia.

"As an organization committed to advancing the field of higher education chaplaincy and supporting chaplains, we are thrilled an additional resource of interfaith blessings and prayers exists. This book encapsulates Janet Fuller's decades of higher education chaplaincy, her dedication to interfaith work, and her deep love for students. This inclusive, passionate, and sacred book will be a useful tool for countless chaplains."

"I've known Jan for several years as a chaplain at a a major university in North Carolina. She is a deeply wise and spiritually centered person, and these prayers and blessings that come from her heart will be a great gift to both students and chaplains alike."

"Jan Fuller brings her exquisite craft, her deep wisdom and her wide-ranging interfaith experience together in this book of prayers. May this beautiful text help spiritual life become an essential part of the college experience for the whole campus."

"This volume contains a master class in multifaith college chaplaincy, taught by one of the greats in the field. I have already begun using it in my teaching of Jewish seminarians."

"A beautiful meditation on the power of naming and the opportunity to reflect deeply, across all axes of differences, on college and university campuses today."

"The gift of Dr. Jan Fuller’s words to inspire other Chaplains and those called on to provide blessings on campus will be a wonderful resource. Blessings is a powerful teaching tool for all those who find themselves at the microphone with a desire to be inclusive and share the impactful presence of love in our work on college campuses."

"Jan’s prayers are truly exceptional. This book gives college and university leaders and chaplains an extraordinary resource. When you are trying to find the right words for important campus celebrations or devastating community losses, this is an invaluable resource, as well as inspiration for your own spiritual centering."

"May the blessings in this marvelous volume be heard by all those who deserve them—which is all of us. The two prayers 'A Vision for a New Class' and 'For the Wonder of Music' alone are enough to have the volume open on your desk or nightstand and there are many, many more within."

"Speaking sacred words in religiously diverse and secular spaces is one of the persistent challenges of contemporary higher education chaplaincy. not only are Fuller's blessings inclusive and adaptable, they're also rhetorically elegant—a wonderful resource for the field!"