St. John’s College has no religious affiliation, but it is a community that welcomes and includes students of all religious and spiritual backgrounds. The college is a home for thoughtful students with the common desire to explore the deep questions of human life, and it recognizes that spiritual life is an integral part of that exploration.

Outside of the classroom, some of our many student groups include the Christian Prayer Group, Shammai, the Orthodox Christian Fellowship, and Men’s and Women’s Christian Fellowships. Students also form extracurricular “study groups” to talk about important ideas, and often study groups tackle religious topics. Recent study groups have included the C. S. Lewis Study Group, the Eastern Classics Study Group, and the Quran Discussion Group.

In the classroom, all students study important religious texts, including the Bible, Augustine, Aquinas, Maimonides, and more. Students relish the opportunity to discuss these texts with classmates from different perspectives and faiths. Elective preceptorial classes during junior and senior year often include texts from Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religious traditions. In the Graduate Institute, one of the four semester-long segments focuses exclusively on philosophy and theology.

St. John’s is a place in which the entire community is continually exploring the deepest questions that motivate philosophical and religious thought. What is truth? What does it mean to live a good human life? What are our obligations to one another? What can we know about the ultimate nature of reality? Both inside and outside the classroom, the perspective of students of faith is part of an ongoing dialogue about the deepest questions of existence that permeates the college culture.
–Emily Langston, Associate Dean for Graduate Programs