Salem’s Chaplain works with the denominational campus ministries and with the Interfaith Council to offer opportunities for worship, Bible study, personal spiritual growth, and dealing with life’s difficult experiences and questions. Student suggestions and involvement are encouraged.  Students are also encouraged to contact the Chaplain or a Chaplain Affiliate about faith exploration opportunities on campus and to contact the Interfaith Council if they would like to represent their faith group.

The Chaplain serves as source of spiritual leadership and counsel for both campuses. In addition to directing the Office of Spiritual and Religious Life, the Interfaith Council, the Chaplain Affiliate Team and the Center for Contemplative Practice and Wellbeing, the Chaplain also teaches classes in the department of Religion, helps integrate frameworks for spiritual wellness into health humanities courses, and presides at ceremonial events in the life of both Salem Academy and College. The Chaplain serves as a member of the Dean of Academic and Student Affairs Council, partners closely with the Center of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, and remains in regular conversation with the Dean of College and the College President.

Rev. Dr. Aminah Al-Attas Bradford

aminah.bradford@salem.edu

Rev. Dr. Bradford serves as both our College Chaplain leading the Office of Spiritual and Religious Life and serves as the Director of the Center for Contemplative Practice and Wellness. Bradford offers spiritual/pastoral support, guidance and a place to reflect for both the College and the Academy, their students, staff and faculty. An ordained minister and doctor of theology, Dr. Bradford is passionate about helping individuals and communities live in alignment with their ethics and vision for life and helping people experience the sacred in what might otherwise be overlooked. Whether you want to interrogate your faith or grow it, whether you need guidance in developing a spiritual practice, healing from an unwelcome religious experience, someone to be with you as you celebrate or grieve or navigate existential questions about life, Dr. Bradford is available to meet with you.

Dr. Bradford is also a research scholar at NCSU where she works in the department of Applied Ecology blending issues of science and religion and hosting cross-disciplinary conversations. She is currently writing a book on the Spirituality of the Microbiome. She has worked in Higher Education for eighteen years and worked in Chaplain’s offices for more than eleven years. In her spare time Dr. Bradford loves to walk in the woods, work in her ceramics studio, best her husband and two daughters in Farkle Championships, and start reading books. Recently she started reading Thích Nhất Hạnh’s How to Sit, Sandor Ellix Katz’s Fermentation as Metaphor, The Cornell West Reader, When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams, and Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer. She will not finish any of these…but she will try.