1930s

1930

First self-identified agnostic and Buddhist students matriculate at Yale College in 1930.

1931

Walter T. Brown, head of the religion department at Yale, assumed the role of acting chaplain from January 1931 until the end of the academic year in spring 1932.

1932

Rev. Sidney A Lovett Jr. installed as second University Chaplain.  Rev. Lovett graduated from Yale in 1913 and was a member of Skull & Bones, later attending Union Theological Seminary. He served as pastor of the Mount Vernon Congregational Church in Boston from 1919-1932 before becoming the second University Chaplain at Yale in the fall of 1932.

1933

In Lovett’s second year, he identified the need for Jewish students to be served by someone with different training than himself, and advocated for a counseling program to begin: the first religious counselling program for Jewish students on campus. This program eventually evolved into the Yale Hillel Foundation.

1935

First self-identified atheist student matriculates at Yale College in 1935.

In 1935, the offices of the University Chaplain and the Church of Christ in Yale moved from Farnam Hall to a larger space in Durfee Hall due to the growing needs of the social and pastoral activities of the Chaplain’s Office.

1938

Father T. Lawrason Riggs, class of 1910, was an early Catholic graduate of Yale and saw the need for a Catholic chaplaincy after the numbers of Catholic students significantly increased after WWI. The Saint Thomas More chapel opens in 1938.

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