Spiritual Life
We strive to be a community that provides opportunities for personal, physical, moral, and spiritual development. Whatever your spiritual path, you’ll find fellow sojourners at Warren Wilson.
An Interfaith Journey
Spiritual Life exists at Warren Wilson College to support students on their journeys of spiritual formation, faith development, religious exploration, vocational discernment, and social justice engagement. We seek interfaith dialogue, creating opportunities for cooperative, constructive and positive interaction between people of different religious traditions and/or spiritual or humanistic beliefs.
In addition to religious groups that meet on a regular basis, Spiritual Life sponsors seasonal rituals, holidays and celebrations. We also provide programming for students who find their spiritual path outside organized religions, by offering opportunities to connect more deeply with oneself, or pursue the bigger questions of meaning and purpose.
Spiritual Life Groups
The Office of Spiritual Life is home to several student-run groups supporting spiritual and religious practice. While the offerings vary from year to year depending on interest, the campus Christian, Jewish, and Pagan groups are active mainstays. In addition, we offer various meditation practice groups, often in collaboration with the Wellness Program. Warren Wilson has an active interfaith community who gathers monthly for a shared meal, and organizes visits to other faith communities in town.
WWC’s Chapel
Located on campus, the Warren Wilson College Presbyterian Church and College Chapel reflects the Presbyterian history of the college while providing weekly Sunday worship conveniently located on campus. Though Warren Wilson remains a member of the Association of Presbyterian Colleges and Universities, it is now an inclusive community for students of all formal and informal faith traditions.
“I am often asked, “What is a Chaplain?” It is a good question and one in which the answer tends to be informed by the setting. At Wilson, chaplaincy means showing up. It’s about working with students, faculty, and staff to provide sacred spaces for story telling – both our own and those that inform who we are and who we want to be. These spaces explore questions and doubt, are open to grief and fear, prayer and silence, celebration and praise. It’s about finding what is holy in a simple walk around the farm or in a religious specific ritual and all that cannot be contained by either. Ultimately, I get to accompany folks as they develop and strengthen a lens through which they see the world and a framework on which helps them make meaning of it.”
Shannon Spencer, Director of Spiritual Life and Chaplain