Chautauqua’s 150th anniversary celebration continues this week with the fourth in a series of five lectures centering on the history of the institution’s program pillars: religion, recreation, education and the arts. This week’s Pillar Talk focuses on Chautauqua’s religion pillar, led by former Director of Religion Maureen Rovegno. Rovegno will speak at 3:15 p.m. today in Smith Wilkes Hall.
Rovegno retired from her role as director of the Department of Religion in 2023, 18 years to the day of first taking the position.
She came well-prepared to work with the Department of Religion, having served previously on the Chautauqua Institution Board of Trustees from 1996 to 2004; as chair of the annual Chautauqua Fund from 1996 to 2002 — the first woman in that position; and as chair of the Religion Advisory Committee from 2000 to 2005, as well as in other capacities for the Department of Religion and the Institution.
Rovegno is a chaplain, having served in hospice, hospital, and prison settings. She was trained in Clinical Pastoral Ministry after receiving her Master’s of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, with a concentration in Comparative Religious Ethics and a ministerial focus in Restorative Justice, working extensively with Healing Circles.
While at HDS, Rovegno also studied Arabic in order to better understand Islam, one of the Abrahamic Religions to which Chautauqua dedicated a 17-year study at her suggestion, for the purpose of teaching the historical and contemporary theological meanings inherent in the belief that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam share a common ancestor in the patriarch Avraham / Abraham / Ibrahim — as well as a common future. The Abraham Program for Young Adults at Chautauqua, back this year after a four-year hiatus, was Rovegno’s brainchild.
Having taught world religions for many years, Rovegno also worked with Ambassador Swanee Hunt’s Women Waging Peace Program at Harvard, and then with the Global Peace Initiative for Women, with the Rev. Joan Brown Campbell, to empower women worldwide to raise their voices for peace and to help other women to do the same.
She took part in the crafting of Karen Armstrong’s Charter for Compassion as part of the Institution’s always broadening Interfaith Outreach. For this purpose, she also created and directed the Chautauqua Abrahamic Program for Young Adults, a signature Chautauqua program to involve young adults ages 16-22 in conversations and experiences that foster understanding and connection among practitioners of the Abrahamic religions as well as all seekers of knowledge.
“There is nothing like (Chautauqua) in the entire world,” Rovegno told The Chautauquan Daily in 2023. “There is no place that has anything like its history. And its history, I love to say, you get to explore with religion.”
