Now and Then—the Life and Times of the Chapel

Publication: The Index

On a clear sunny day in the largest city of southwest Michigan, if your elevation allows, you can soak in the skyline of Kalamazoo. If you’re pointed in the right direction you can usually catch a glimpse of the symbol for Kalamazoo College poking out among the tree tops—the Stetson Chapel bell tower. This emblem marks the center of a small, private liberal arts school often overlooked. It’s hidden in the outer stretches of a sea of buildings that surround it. This sea of buildings comprises its younger more massive neighboring institution, Western Michigan University. On a cloudier day the bell tower of Stetson Chapel stands stark against the gray sky, overlooking the modest, green quadrangle that sprawls below its lofty height.

Students travel beneath its gaze, crossing the spaces in front, behind, and beside it several times a day. Looking up from the red brick road running up through the campus, a student can often be seen, head tilted up to take in that central campus structure that has evolved immensely since its conception in the early 1900s.

Back then, in the fall of 1928, Kalamazoo College was nearing its centennial and its president, Allen Hoben, requested the construction of a chapel. Founded as the Michigan and Huron Institute by a judge, and a Baptist Minister, in 1833, four years before Michigan was granted Statehood, the college’s name changed to Kalamazoo College in 1855. Seeking to realize a college noted for its scholarship and Christian standards of life, President Hoben insisted that a campus chapel was an essential addition to the college.

In Hoben’s letter to the Chairman that year, he wrote, “It is no secret that a college of our type needs above everything else literally, practically, morally and imperatively a chapel. There is nothing so formative important and central in the education which we aspire to give.”

Dedicated on the 22^nd of April 1932 to President Emeritus Herbert Lee Stetson, the “grand old man” of Kalamazoo College, Stetson Chapel has remained the symbol for ‘K’ since it’s inception. Its past, was melded by two aims of thought—religion and education. Its present arises from the evolution these thoughts have incurred in the years that span now and then.

            Throughout its years, Stetson has housed the office space for various chaplains, intent on fostering the spiritual lives of Kalamazoo College Students. From 2001 through 2008 Jeanne Hess, an avid teacher and devoted coach at ‘K’, served as the assistant chaplain for Stetson during a transition period for the Chapel—a campus space for which she urges the campus community, as well as the outside community, to come and get to know.

            Hess fills her office space in Anderson, which sits at the bottom of the campus hill, inside the athletic building. Since 2008 a new chaplain has taken over and the position of assistant chaplain, for the moment, no longer exists. Short sporty hair-do, bright blue eyes, a smile that stretches far and wide, I listen as Hess speaks volumes about Stetson. “The Chapel puts into bricks and mortar that which we value, of which can never be put in bricks and mortar of our religious and our spiritual life, and that has evolved from a prescription of you be there and you listen, to come and join us and be a part of this community.”

            Stetson Chapel has transitioned from a structure built out of a Puritan epoch, with a pointed purpose to a more fluid purpose with wider notions of what spirituality is. Stetson Chapel’s architecture speaks to a simpler time. It is a grand structure yet is far from being grandiose. The Roman Ionic columns of the entrance to Stetson stand and represent the classical ideals of antiquity such as the quest for knowledge through reason. Meanwhile, the rest of its design evokes the Puritan virtues of simplicity and restraint.

            Presently, Stetson Chapel provides students and community members of all faiths and backgrounds with a quiet place for reflection among its vast array of other uses. The space is versatile. It welcomes academic speakers from every discipline, it is host to a number of student organizations often run by the student interns and chaplains who work and volunteer there. It is where the Kalamazoo community celebrates, mourns, welcomes, and congratulates. Upon entering the chapel you can sense that is a place for intentional quiet.

Student Chaplain Emily Cain notes that Stetson is not the kind of atmosphere everyone is interested in, but she encourages her friends to come down. Down, meaning, to the cavern of the Chapel. The cavern is the basement of the Chapel, a place where students will find free cookies, a huge assortment of quality teas accompanied by hot water and cozy corners, at times even quieter than the farthest reaches of the library’s third floor. 

Cain first become involved in Chapel events because of the first year forums put on for each new class of students at Kalamazoo College. “If you need a place on campus to be alone or to do homework, the Chapel is a great place to check out”, says Cain.

Stetson is an open chapel where students are meant to explore. They are even welcome to climb the spiral staircase that leads to a balcony, the clerestory, that looks and feels like a secret. Hess explains the feeling when she says, “It gives you that cool feeling in your solar plexus like, ‘cool nobody knows about this’, where you can sleep or just go rest and just go be. You know, it’s not an academic space.”

The stress level of life at ‘K’ College calls for such a place. One of the most centralizing activities for the Kalamazoo community at Stetson is the weekly dialogues that are addressed each Friday during common time for teachers and students—Community Reflections. For Hess these discussions are, “a great space that’s carved out with time, intentional time that students and faculty and staff can gather together and really reflect.”

This time used to be somewhat mandatory. Students would earn Liberal Arts Colloquium (LAC) credits that were required for graduation but now it’s a choice, it means wanting to pay attention to certain issues—another aspect of Stetson’s evolution. For Hess this transition is transformative for the student.

“It has a greater purpose, evolving from the academic to embracing the whole student, to really getting the student to understand this idea of community and where they fit in the community and their thought about who they are within the community. It’s evolved into demanding that the student look at their spiritual presence, that they look at who they are and why and what they’re doing here and they find a greater purpose.”

For Hess this spiritual presence embraces diversity, she says, “We have evolved from this idea of simply Christian religion, into all faiths, honoring all faiths, honoring everyone, honoring race and gender and creed and all of it; it’s honoring the whole person. The root word of holy is to be whole in mind body and spirit and so the chapel is a holy space, it’s a sanctuary where all can feel welcome, all need to feel welcome.”

In 2008 Elizabeth (Liz) Candido became the Chaplain for Kalamazoo College. In charge of religious and spiritual life at ‘K’, she says with a bright smile, “I certainly have the best job on campus.” She tells me about one of the most recent additions to the Chapel. It’s an ancient form of meditation and it looks like a brain—the labyrinth. Placed up in the grass where the Stryker center used to sit at the top of Monroe, the labyrinth has one way in and one way out. You start with a question or a topic that you seek direction with, “from god, the universe, or wisdom, for example. The path of the labyrinth spirals inward and the middle is the place to listen for the “moment of insight”. During the Community Reflection just before crystal ball at the end of 8^th week Liz introduced the topics to be discussed saying this, “The way it is here may seem like it is the way it’s always been but that is not the case. There is nothing inevitable about today. The rules we live by are the rules we create.”

To the Chapel’s continual transformation Hess says, “A rather Christian looking building, students of faith other than Christianity may or may not feel comfortable in that space. I think Liz is working hard to carve out a space for students of all faiths and to feel comfortable there and that it is a space where you may gather intentionally it really is a holy space, full of, it holds the memory of the soul of this college, it really does—the inaugurations of all the presidents, the last reflections of all the presidents, faculty, oh, it’s very rich. It has a profound history.”

Junior Kalamazoo College student Craig Isser is a student Chaplain and an active member of the Jewish Student Organization (JSO) who spoke at the 9^th week Community Reflection after Liz’s introduction. The topic was “Why do we dress in drag?” He ended his presentation by introducing himself, “I’m Craig and I identify as Craig. I’m a lot more than a gay penis in a dress.” Inside the Chapel no topics are taboo, no beliefs unwelcome.

Just as Hess pointed out, the Chapel and Kalamazoo College as a whole aims to support the whole of a person. “It is who we are, it represents our heart it represents our mind it represents our bodies and I think we would be wise here in this place to honor them all”.

When he’s not speaking at Community Reflections Craig uses the Cavern for working on his poetry without distraction, at times taking a break to write on the chalk walk that is new this year. Upstairs he feels like he’s “in a wedding cake”.

“The columns and the light of the chandeliers it feels so beautiful and pristine. It’s so special to escape the confines of my dorm room or academic work in this space. I feel like it’s a different world in here. It’s like stepping into a European Cathedral. It’s beautiful and I love it.”

            In a few short weeks another class of students will graduate from Kalamazoo College. The night before they walk convocation takes place in the Chapel. Names of those who died before their time on this green campus, faculty, students, and staff, line the walls of the sanctuary we remember them through plaques as the community celebrates the accomplishments of a group of students who go forth into the world to make the most of this short life. An image of the Stetson Chapel bell tower on their diplomas, its purpose transcends the one its creators foresaw but the words of Reverend T. Torrance Phelps, D. D., a former student of Kalamazoo College, on the symbolism of Stetson in 1932 do not contradict our views today.

“Stetson Chapel is like a great organ sounding forth a message of many notes. It rises in the center of campus. It represents the past, the present, and the future. Upon the front of the great tower soaring above all is the inscription, “Koinonia Pneumatas”—Fellowship of the spirit. When you stand before any noble structure, what is the supreme word it speaks to you? When you step within a majestic cathedral, and see arch pointing upward to arch, and pillar to spire, something within you soars up that cannot be stopped. It is the essence. It is aspiration. So it is here. Aspire. Thy only greatness is to aspire.”

To what we aspire is our decision, ours, not society. Stetson Chapel is a holy space for us to decide. A norm of an institution then, during the 1800s, was to build a chapel. Now, at ‘K’, Liz says, “we create the norms.”