Twenty-five-foot silk paintings. An 8,000-pipe organ. A choir of more than 70 people. Walking with a friend into the Chapel one day two years ago, the sheer scale of the Catholic Mass overwhelmed Nene Kalu '07. This was just her second time attending a Mass — and the first had been for a class assignment.
At first, Kalu had not expected anything from her trip to the University Chapel. She had studying to do. She thought she would accompany her friend to a service and then leave, just as she had arrived, unchanged. But that was not to be.
"It really was one of the life-changing moments," Kalu recalled recently.
Then a Protestant, Kalu realized that this church, this Mass, this religion, were all part of a new life that she wanted for herself. "It was like home."
That day was the first of Kalu's journey toward conversion to Catholicism. Now, two years after her trip to the Chapel, she is among the most active Catholics on campus, as a student coordinator of the Aquinas Institute.
As a religious convert, Kalu is part of a small group of students who have gone through the process of religious conversion while on campus. The students each have different reasons for converting: some were looking for a new philosophy to live by; some felt there was a void in their lives that needed to be filled.
"People are for the first time making decisions about how they are going to organize their life," Paul Raushenbush, associate dean of religious life, said. "People tend to have some sort of depending or falling away from their religious traditions."
All of the students had to deal with the obstacles that come with conversion, including the length of the process, the confusion of friends and family and the need to change lifelong traditions. Despite these road blocks, each student remained focused. Now religion is a central part of their lives.
The decision to convert
Kalu was brought up like many American Christians — she went to church twice a year, on Christmas and Easter. But when she was in high school, her mother became more involved in their Baptist church and their family began to go to church every Sunday.
In high school, Kalu joined a church youth group, and as a freshman at Princeton, Manna Christian Fellowship, an on-campus religious group.
"I wanted a Christian community," Kalu said. "It was a really good fit."
Despite her involvement in the predominantly Protestant group in her freshman and sophomore years, Kalu felt something extraordinary when she went to the University Chapel on that feast day Mass her sophomore year.
Kalu hesitated, however, to even think about conversion to Catholicism because of stereotypes and preconceptions she had of the religion.
"I was very hesitant to say, 'Now I want to become Catholic,'" she recalled. "Catholicism is too weird," she thought. "I am not Catholic."
Growing up, "the Catholic Church was like the Other," she said.
Kalu is not alone in shifting her beliefs, abandoning the familiar for something new and different.
Owen Fletcher '08 grew up in homogenous Boise, Idaho, attending church regularly. When he turned 18, however, he decided to explore Buddhism — a drastic diversion from his upbringing.
Fletcher began reading books on Buddhism and living what he calls "the lifestyle of a philosophical Buddhist," with independent meditation and reading. He did not call himself a Buddhist, however. He was interested in the intellectual side of Buddhism as a way to lead his life.
Faith, a student who wanted to remain anonymous to respect her family's reaction to her decision to convert, was also raised in a Christian household. She attended Catholic elementary school, participated in a church youth group, sang in the choir and followed the beliefs of her family.
But Faith said she always knew she wasn't a Christian. As long as she could remember, she was interested in pursuing other religions. And in 11th grade, she began her exploration.
The long road to a new religion
The process of conversion differs in both intensity and time depending on students' conviction and the religion they decide to explore.
For Kalu, several months passed between that initial Mass and when she began to take her curiosity seriously. During that time, Kalu hesitated, trying to forget about the issue. But she said there was still something missing. She wanted a more liturgical practice of religion, and her current evangelical faith was not satisfying it. This is when she decided to talk to friends who were involved in Catholicism on campus.
"My friend was like, 'Maybe you should look more in depth ... before you disagree,' " she said.
Christian Sahner '07, Kalu's co-leader in Aquinas, recalled speaking with Kalu during her time of curiosity about Catholicism.
"She had never really encountered or thought about Catholicism," he said. "We had a casual conversation, but she really fell in love with the church."
"I became convinced," Kalu said. "It just made sense."
Faith began reading books on other religions in 11th grade. Initially, she grew interested in Judaism, by taking a course and speaking with people about the religion. As a freshman at the University, she even went as far as to speak with the rabbis on campus about formalizing her conversion.
This all changed after her freshman year, when she decided to study Arabic abroad over the summer in northern Africa. While living with a Muslim family, Faith began to read Islamic philosophy and the Quran, which raised questions about her own life.
"I started to realize my mortality," she said. "I could die any day, and this forced me to reevaluate my decisions."
Faith realized through studying the Islamic texts that she had only ever considered the religions more prevalent in the Western world. Islam was around her both religiously and culturally while she was abroad, and that changed her previous conceptions of the religion.
"I was able to see Islam day to day," she said. "It was so different than you read in the Quran because culture affected how it was carried out. I was able to see how much how my culture affects what I do every day."
Convinced that the religion was for her, Faith began practicing Islam on her own through saying the daily prayers, continuing to learn Arabic and actively reading the Quran.
Formalizing their decisions
As soon as Faith returned to Princeton, she contacted the new Muslim chaplain, Khalid Latif, to discuss the Islamic declaration of faith, known as the shahada, and her formal conversion to Sunni Islam.
"She had some questions, and there was some discussion," Latif recalled. "After a couple of times, she wanted [to go through with it.]"
Despite some of her questions, Latif said that Faith knew more about the religion that many people interested in converting do — she had already been fasting during the month of Ramadan and knew the Islamic prayers in Arabic.
Latif, who also serves as the Muslim chaplain at New York University, told Faith that she could take her shahada at NYU in September. Faith soon learned that she was the first Princeton student in five years to convert to Islam while on campus.
Kalu, too, took advantage of religious figures on campus to smooth her process of conversion.
Once she decided to convert in February 2005, Kalu's progression was accelerated. She spoke with Father Tom Mullaly, the Catholic priest on campus, about becoming confirmed into the Catholic Church. The formal process involves a yearlong class, "The Right of Christian Initiation for Adults." Since she had already been baptized in the Presbyterian Church, Kalu just needed confirmation to formally convert.
The class, which started in September 2004, was only one month away from ending. "I didn't want to wait another year," she said. "[Father Tom] thought I was ready."
Kalu took the next month to do even more research and to pray, which she took very seriously. "You cannot do it on a whim," she said. "You are a Catholic for life."
Kalu was confirmed during the Easter vigil in March 2005, which Kalu said was "the best decision [she] ever made."
Family confusion
Criticism from others is a frequent hurdle for student converts, especially when it comes from family.
Theo Yale '08 has always considered himself culturally Jewish because his father is Jewish. But at the age of 13, Yale wanted to make it more official and began reading books on Orthodox Judaism with another nonreligious Jewish friend.
Yale's parents, one of whom is still a nonreligious Jew, thought that his interest in Orthodox Judaism would pass.
"In the beginning, they thought it was a weird phase," he said. "When I got more serious about it, they were a little more hostile to it. And now, it is sort of in a true state. They don't understand it, but they accept it."
To become an Orthodox Jew, Yale also had to convince rabbis of his sincerity. In his senior year of high school, after years of studying and eating only Kosher food, he visited the Rabbinic Court of Queens in New York to speak with the rabbis there about converting.
In Jewish tradition, rabbis are supposed to turn converts away three times in order to make sure the person is serious.
"[The rabbi] was pretty scary," he said. "At the time he was pretty mean. I understand why. He was certainly sensitive, and his job was to be serious."
It took between seven and eight months of meetings for the rabbis to take him seriously. In the fall of his freshman year, Yale finally received his opportunity to meet with the rabbinic court to formally convert. There he took the traditional Jewish bath, called a mikvah and got circumcised.
Kalu also encountered others' confusion over her choice. Her parents initially took the news of her conversion well because, Kalu said, they are not the kind of parents to tell her how to live her life. But now, when Kalu prays daily as a practicing Catholic, her parents don't take it well.
"They don't understand," she said. "They say, 'Why would you want to join a church like that?' "
The practice of new religion
With the obstacles of converting mostly in the past, the practice of the students' new religions is what they now get to enjoy.
While Fletcher actively practices Buddhism, he does not classify it as his religious affiliation.
"It is a strong philosophical identification," he said. "I am not comfortable calling it a religious classification. It is a state of mind when you are meditating."
On days when Fletcher does not meditate, though, he said he feels "awful."
Kalu has stayed heavily involved in her personal prayer and Catholic student groups, calling it "the center of my life."
"[Catholicism] really came and surprised me," she said. "Maybe it's the reason I am [at Princeton] — to become Catholic and go down a more spiritual path."
As an Orthodox Jew on campus, Yale wears a yarmulke on a daily basis and is active at the Center for Jewish Life. He is interested in possibly pursuing a career as a rabbi.
"I think [being a rabbi is] the sort of thing that if you have to be right for it," he said. "If you are not right for it, you have to be honest with yourself that you aren't. Bad rabbis are very, very dangerous."
But, he added, "Part of life is seeing what God has in store for you."
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