The University Chapel
continues a tradition of public worship that goes back to Princeton's
founding in 1746. For the first ten years of the College's existence,
daily services were celebrated in the studies of the first two
presidents -- the Reverend Jonathan Dickinson, in Elizabethtown,
and the Reverend Aaron Burr, in Newark. After the College moved
to Princeton in 1756, a prayer-hall in Nassau Hall (for a time
the meeting place of the Continental Congress on state occasions,
and now the Faculty Room) was used for services until 1847, when
the first chapel was built. This chapel, described in a novel
of that period as ``a beautiful smile on a plain face,'' was replaced
in 1882 by the larger Marquand Chapel, gift of Henry G. Marquand,
and thereafter was known as the ``Old Chapel'' until it was razed
in 1896 to make way for Pyne Library. Marquand Chapel was destroyed
by fire in the spring of 1920. Services were then conducted in
Alexander Hall until 1928. The cornerstone of the University Chapel
was laid in 1925, and it was dedicated on Sunday, May 31, 1928.
THE DEANS
Until 1928 the president of the University
was directly responsible for supervision of the Chapel programs.
That year the office of dean of the chapel was created by the
trustees and the Reverend Robert Russell Wicks of Holyoke was
appointed as the first incumbent. In the same year, the chair
of Dean of the Chapel of the University was endowed by their families
in memory of the Rev. Wilton Merle-Smith and Judge Walter Lloyd-Smith,
twin brothers in the Princeton Class of 1877. The gift also provided
for a deanery to house the dean and his family. Dean Wicks challenged
the unexamined premises of many undergraduates and demonstrated
the vitality of the Christian faith in the modern world. On his
retirement in 1947, Wicks was succeeded by the Right Reverend
Donald B. Aldrich, former Bishop Coadjutor of the Protestant Episcopal
Diocese of Michigan and a charter trustee of the University. An
experienced pastor, Dean Aldrich counseled students compassionately
in the confused times following World War II. Owing to ill health,
he resigned in 1955. He was succeeded by the Reverend Ernest Gordon,
an ordained minister of the Church of Scotland a former minister
of Paisley Abbey -- situated in the same town where the Reverend
John Witherspoon served as minister of the Laigh Kirk (low church)
before his call to the Princeton presidency in 1768.
REQUIRED CHAPEL ATTENDENCE
The College of New Jersey was firmly rooted
in the fertile soil of the Great Awakening. One of its empahses
was that an individual was accountable before God for his life,
his neighbors, his country, and his backyard. This resulted in
a personal discipline of prayers, praise, and thanksgiving. For
136 years after the College began, students were required to attend
morning prayers (originally at 5 a.m.) and evening prayers daily,
and morning and afternoon services on Sunday. These requirements
were a source of student complaint and frequent pranks. Stories
that have come down from alumni of that period recall that once
the seats of the ``Old Chapel'' were tarred, at another time the
benches were literally buried in hay, and at still another a cow
was discovered up near the pulpit just before the morning service
began.
Irreverence of students was apparently most
noticeable during long prayers. President Ermeritus Maclean continued
to take part in the services during James McCosh's presidency.
He was accustomed to praying not only for the nation and for the
College but also for everyone associated with their respective
administrations. On one sudnay he concluded his lengthy litany
with additional prayers for the Seniors, the Juniors, and Sophomores,
and then, Henry Fairfield Osborn 1877 recalled, ``as the Reverend
Doctor reached the Freshman, a roar of laughter proceeded from
the seemingly reverently bowed heads of the entire student body.
At this unexpected `Amen' Doctor McCosh became very impatient.
After the disturbance was duly quelled and the Doxology sung with
unusual fervor, he was heard to remark: `Surely Doctor Maclean
is in his dotage; he ought to have more sense than to pray for
the Freshmen.
" The remark is not surprising from
a divine who is alleged to have opened a prayer, soon after the
publication of one of his most successufl books, with these words:
``O Thou who has also written a book."
By 1882, changing views of life's priorities
brought the abolition of required attendance at daily vespers,
and in 1902 the required Sunday afternoon service was also discontinued.
By 1905 attendance at morning prayers (then held at 7 a.m.) was
required only twice a week, and in 1915 this requirement was given
up entirely. Protests continued about Sunday chapel. A ``Chapel
Strike at Princeton,'' as headlined by New York newspapers in
1914, turned out, in the Daily Princetonian's version, to be ``a
lengthy attack of bronchitis . . . [during] a lengthier prayer.
At the conclusion of the prayer, the pitiable cough subsided,
and the service continued uninterrupted.'' The Prince said the
incident demonstrated the conviction of students that Sunday chapel
should end promptly at noon; ``this is their religion.''
Required attendance at Sunday chapel ended
eventually; for upperclassmen in 1935, for sophomores in 1960,
and finally, for freshmen in 1964. The trustees' decision to remove
the last vestige of compulsion was made, in their official words,
``in the best interests of a freer, more honest, creative expression
of religion.''
DENOMINATIONAL SOCIETIES AND CHAPLAINS
The achievement of religious harmony has
been one of the Chapel's functions. The denominational societies,
and their chaplains, cooperate with the work of the University
Chapel and contribute to its activities. There are eleven of these
societies. The oldest of them, the Episcopal Procter Foundation,
was begun in 1876 as St. Paul's Society. The Presbyterian Westminster
Foundation, the Catholic Club (later the Aquinas Institute), the
Methodist Wesley Club, and the Evangelical Fellowship were organized
in the 1920s. After World War II the Jewish Hillel Foundation,
Lutheran Student Fellowship, Baptist Student Fellowship, Unitarian/Universalist
Fellowship, Christian Science Organization, and the Orthodox Christian
St. Photius Society were founded. The University makes its facilities
available to the denominational societies for services and meetings
and extends various courtesies and privileges to the chaplains.
THE RECENT YEARS
The first noticeable consequence of the
abolition of the last Chapel requirement in 1964 was a decline
in attendance by freshmen and an increase in attendance by upperclassmen.
When the Class of 1967 graduated, attendance took a rapid plunge
due to the departure of 300 seniors who had been active members
of the Chapel Fellowship. It was the growth of this fellowship
in the years preceding the abolition of the requirement that insured
the continuation of the Chapel's place on the campus. It was made
up of diverse groups representing a wide range of interests, such
as study, discussion, religious drama, social service, music,
Chapel administration, and charitable enterprises.
Although the building was once called, by
some, Princeton's two-million-dollar protest against materialism,
and, by others, a great white whale, its architectural strength
has contributed to its place as the center of spiritual life on
the campus. It is seen to be the one building that exalts the
whole of creation and humanity. Since 1957 it has been kept open
daily from 8 a.m. to 12:30 a.m. to serve the needs of the University
community; the closing service each day is an Organ Epilogue from
11 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. Sunday services are held during the twelve
months of the year.
THE UNIVERSITY CHAPEL
It is in the Chapel that the University
comes together as a community. This is true not only at Opening
Exercises, Baccalaureate Services, annual memorial services for
members of the University and again for alumni, funerals and weddings;
it has also been true on occasions of national tragedy such as
the assassinations of President John Kennedy, his brother Robert,
and Martin Luther King, Jr. Because it provides a center for community,
it attracts a large number of alumni and visitors to its services.
It has also been a bridge between town and gown, and between the
several academic communities of Princeton. The Thanksgiving and
Christmas services are mostly for the benefit of townspeople.
Organ and choral music are
an important part of the Chapel program. They have both come a
long way since the days when Yale's President Ezra Stiles after
a visit in 1770 declared the organ in Nassau Hall ``an innovation
of ill consequence,'' and when John Adams, later President of
the United States, reported after his visit to Princeton in 1774,
``The Schollars sing as badly as the Presbyterians at New York.''
THE PRAYER FOR THE UNIVERSITY
The Prayer for the University, by Dean Donald
B. Aldrich, is inscribed on the wall of the Chapel just south
of the main door and used each Sunday in the service:
O Eternal God, the source of life and
light for all peoples, we pray that you would endow this University
with your grace and wisdom. Give inspiration and understanding
to those who teach and to those who learn. Grant vision to its
trustees and administrators. To all who work here and to all
who bear her name, give your guiding Spirit of sacrificial courage
and loving service. Amen.
NOTE: For a description of the architecture,
sculpture, and windows of the University Chapel, see: Richard
Stillwell, The Chapel of Princeton University, Princeton University
Press, 1971.
Alexander
Leitch, A Princeton Companion, copyright Princeton University
Press (1978)
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