KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 9 September
Chapel beginnings ( and endings)!
“In the beginning God … In the beginning was the Word.” These are two of the greatest opening lines in all literature; the one from the beginning of the Hebrew Book of Genesis, the other from the Prologue which marks the beginning of The Gospel according to St. John. For quite a few years, it has become a tradition at King’s-Edgehill School for the Head Boy and Head Girl (Spencer Johnson & Ava Shearer) to read Genesis 1.1-5 and John 1.1-5 at the first Chapel services of the School year. Why?
Because they are such powerful foundational and formative passages which place us within the spiritual understanding of education which speaks to the whole person. Thus they provide a ground of unity and purpose to all four pillars of the School in its educational philosophy: the academic, the artistic, the athletic, and the idea of service in leadership. These are not merely a list of things, like boxes to be checked off. They are all interrelated. What gives them a deeper sense of connection and unity of purpose is the spiritual experience of Chapel. It recalls us to the idea and reality of how we are all part of something greater than ourselves and to the idea of an education which constantly calls us out of ourselves.
There is something quite wonderful and quite challenging about the first Chapels. Each year we have a whole lot of new students, many of whom have never been in a sacred space and have never encountered religion – itself a challenging word – as something that is to be thought about as belonging to education. There is no subject or discipline in our schools which does not have in some way or another a connection to the religions of the world. The greater challenge, perhaps, lies in addressing the most prevalent misconception about religion in contemporary culture: the idea that religion is, first and foremost, a private or personal matter.
Chapel is not about an affirmation of the various and indeterminate forms of personal identity and/or personal faith or non-faith that are part of our current culture. Like education, religion cannot be coerced or forced. It is more a question about ideas and questions that cannot be ignored or denied; at best, my task is to offer and to point out the ways in which religious traditions in their richness and philosophical truth address questions about the world and about our humanity. It is all about the questions. Students and faculty come from all sorts of different ethnic, linguistic, cultural, and ideological backgrounds with a whole host of assumptions and opinions. Regardless of our claims to identity and personal faith, we all enter into the life of the School which is prior to us all. Chapel is simply an integral part of the history and life of the School, an integral part of the educational project and experience.
The School’s origins and history are Christian and Anglican. The Chapel service is not ‘non-denominational’ but neither is it something narrowly sectarian. A simplified version of Mattins or Morning Prayer, it belongs very much within the orbit of the forms of worship common to a great number of religious traditions both Christian and non-Christian: two hymns, a Scripture sentence, confession and absolution, the Lord’s Prayer, a Scripture reading, a homily, intercessory prayers, the School prayer, and a blessing. All pretty basic. My challenge is to speak out of the Christian understanding but with a view towards the forms of its connection and engagement with other religious and philosophical traditions regardless of the faith or non-faith claims of students and faculty.