January 21, 2008
Stokes named director of Chapel, Gandhi Institute
june.avignone@rochester.edu
Allison Stokes, founding director of the Women’s
Interfaith Institute and a pastor for 26 years in the United Church of
Christ, has been named the new director of the Interfaith Chapel and of the
M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, both located on the River Campus.
“Allison Stokes has long experience in
interfaith ministry that she will build upon in serving the needs of both
long-standing and emerging religious groups, and in strengthening
interfaith dialogue on campus,” said Richard Feldman, dean of the
College. “With her arrival, the College has the opportunity to become
a more influential force promoting dialogue, tolerance, and peace in our
community and beyond.”
Stokes’s commitment to interfaith ministry led
her to become the driving force behind establishing the Women’s
Interfaith Institute in the Berkshires in western Massachusetts.
Established in 1992, the nonprofit activist organization is dedicated to
empowering women of all faiths to pursue religious and spiritual leadership
roles. The Women’s Interfaith Institute in the Fingerlakes was
established in 2002 with the purchase of a historic church in Seneca Falls.
“It feels providential, as if everything I have
done in my professional life to this point has prepared me for this
position,” said Stokes of the timing as well as the religious and
social scope of her appointment. “It is a blessing.”
Her work in the interfaith community led to her
participation in the Parliament of the World Religions in Cape Town, South
Africa in December 1999.
Stokes has also served as protestant chaplain at
Ithaca College, college chaplain at Vassar College, associate
university chaplain at Yale University, and as pastor for 13 years at the
Congregational Church, in West Stockbridge, Mass .
The M. K. Gandhi Institute for Nonviolence, founded in
1991 by Arun Gandhi, a grandson of Mohandas K. Gandhi and his late
wife, Sunanda, is dedicated to promoting peace and nonviolence in the
greater Rochester community and the world. The Institute, for which Gandhi
serves as president, relocated to the University of Rochester from the
University of Memphis, Tenn. this past summer.
Stokes’ newest book about the Abrahamic
religious traditions, titled Shalom, Salaam, Peace, is a book about hope
and illuminates how competing and exclusive “truth” claims in
all religions can generate intolerance and violence.
“It is a genuine inspiration to work with Arun
Gandhi and all of the chaplains here, the students, faculty, and
community,” Stokes said. “A commitment to nonviolence gives
hope for a more peaceful and just world, and we need to remind each other
of that and build on it.”
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