About the USC Office of Religious and Spiritual Life

The mission of University of Southern California’s Office of Religious & Spiritual Life (ORSL) is to foster a vibrant university community that encourages the pursuit of meaning through spiritual reflection and free inquiry, provides fair opportunities to participate in religious life, advances mutual understanding and respect among differing traditions – and in all these ways, strengthens us to actively engage in building a just and peaceful world.

ORSL sponsors a variety of opportunities for exploring the spiritual dimensions of your life and learning. We can help you find a religious home base or form a new group, handle an ethical dilemma or research a paper topic. ORSL sponsors campus programs with a moral, religious or spiritual focus. It co-sponsors events with other university units and partnerships of student religious groups. And we are there for the entire USC community in times of celebration and loss, to offer benedictions at university convocations and to help organize memorial services as needed.

To these ends, the Office of Religious Life seeks to encourage:

  • spiritual wholeness
  • moral reasoning
  • personal responsibility
  • community engagement
  • the pursuit of meaning and purpose
  • religious literacy within the context of religious pluralism
  • interfaith and interreligious dialogue and collaboration