Jer Bryant ’03, ’10 MA, the University of Lynchburg’s associate chaplain, has been named to the board of the North American Hindu Chaplains Association. For the next three and a half years, he will serve as an executive board member and the board’s secretary.
“I am deeply honored and … very excited to serve a wonderful organization that has supported me as a spiritual care provider,” Bryant wrote in a social media post.
As a member of the executive board, Bryant will take meeting minutes, maintain records, and help prepare for monthly meetings, programs, and other events, including the organization’s annual conference.
According to Bryant, the University currently has about 50 students who identify as Hindu. He says his service on the NAHCA board “sends a message of belonging and inclusion” and “demonstrates our University’s dedication to compassionate care.”
Lynchburg’s first interfaith chaplain, Bryant initially became interested in Dharmic faith traditions — Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and Sikhism — as a middle school student in Amherst County, Virginia.
In his sixth-grade classroom, he found a book that he says “changed my life.”
“I found a book on Indian culture and Dharmic faith traditions sitting on my teacher’s shelf,” Bryant said in a keynote address at New Student Convocation on Aug. 20. “It challenged a lot of the beliefs that had been instilled in me, but I read parts of it over and over.
“I was so curious about how others saw divinity, and I was grateful that I was able to read such a book — that my teacher had curated a collection of books on a wide variety of topics and viewpoints.”
Bryant was new to the school, having transferred from a school that, as he describes it, “didn’t allow such exploration” and “did not seem to value curiosity or diversity of thought. But I was a curious boy who deeply loved spirituality and needed to know more.
“And I was in a new school with new books. While other kids wanted to talk about baseball cards, the boy band New Kids on the Block, or video games, I wanted to know about reincarnation. I was that kid.”
