Word: christianize
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Corporation, highest ruling board of the University, will reportedly state that Memorial Church is open to non-Christian groups, but that its "Christian character" will not be altered...
Support for President Pusey came from Meyer Kestnbaum '18 of Hart, Shaffner and Marx. At last Monday's meeting of the Board of Overseers, he favored the Christian tradition of the Church, and spoke strongly for the President's stand...
This announcement was greeted with a hail of criticism, from both alumni and undergraduates. These objectors attacked the whole idea of a Christian church or any other place of worship as being inappropriate for a war memorial. Those killed had made a purely secular sacrifice; they had fought out of a sense of patriotic duty. Only in a very few cases, it was argued, had they felt any religious dedication. Religion, moreover, seemed of little importance in undergraduate life, and many claimed that the relatively small Appleton Chapel was more than adequate for the University's Sunday worshippers...
This understanding of the Christian nature of the church is further indicated from the few protests that did treat this aspect of the controversy. "Why should the Christian creed, to the exclusion of all others, be chosen for the memorial?" demanded H. U. Brandenstein '90 of President Lowell in a letter written to the President in 1928. "Harvard University, like the government under which we live, is a lay institution." Lowell replied that he respected this objection, but felt the majority of alumni should have...
Money for Memorial Church came in slowly, and the building could not be dedicated until Armistice Day, 1932. It was an unmistakably Christian service, with lessons from the Bible and a recitation of the Lord's Prayer. Dean Willard L. Sperry of the Divinity School was completely explicit in emphasizing the church's Christian character: "Wherefore unto the King Eternal, Immortal, Invisible, the only Wise God, we dedicate this Church, in the service of Christ...." Bishop William Lawrence '71 added in his address, "This Chapel stands in the name of Him whose birth was heralded by the words, 'Peace...