Marsh Chapel is a building on the campus of

Boston University Boston University (BU) is a Private university, private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. The university is nonsectarian, but has a historical affiliation with the United Methodist Church. It was founded in 1839 by Methodists with ...

used as the official place of worship of the school. It was named for Daniel L. Marsh, a former president of BU and a

Methodist Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's ...

minister. The building is

Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...

in style. While Methodism, the university's historical denomination, exerts a great influence on the chapel, it is formally non-denominational. The current dean of Marsh Chapel is Rev. Dr. Robert Hill, an ordained elder in The United Methodist Church.

History

Plans for a riverside chapel at the university were made as early as 1920, when the university purchased the Charles River Campus and commissioned a master plan from architect Ralph Adams Cram. Originally, the chapel was to be complemented by the Alexander Graham Bell tower, a Gothic Revival administrative structure named for the inventor of the telephone and other innovations. The chapel was not constructed until after the Great Depression and

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

. Ralph Adams Cram was selected as its architect. He designed the building in the Gothic style. The building was dedicated in 1950. Because of competition from Modernist and other architectural influences, the chapel marked the end of a period of Collegiate Gothic construction on American campuses.

Good Friday experiment

The chapel was the site of the

Marsh Chapel Experiment The Marsh Chapel Experiment, also called the "Good Friday Experiment", was a 1962 experiment conducted on Good Friday at Boston University's Marsh Chapel. Walter N. Pahnke, a graduate student in theology at Harvard Divinity School, designed the e ...

on Good Friday. Researchers studying human thought included

Walter Pahnke Walter Norman Pahnke (Jan 18, 1931 – July 10, 1971) was a minister, physician, and psychiatrist most famous for the "Good Friday Experiment", also referred to as the Marsh Chapel Experiment or the "Miracle of Marsh Chapel". Pahnke attended Harv ...

Timothy Leary Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American psychologist and author known for his strong advocacy of psychedelic drugs. Evaluations of Leary are polarized, ranging from bold oracle to publicity hound. He was "a her ...

, a Harvard professor and later psychedelic guru; and

Richard Alpert Ram Dass (born Richard Alpert; April 6, 1931 – December 22, 2019), also known as Baba Ram Dass, was an American spiritual teacher, guru of modern yoga, psychologist, and author. His best-selling 1971 book '' Be Here Now'', which has been d ...

(who would later become known as Ram Dass).

Influence on Civil Rights Movement

Between 1953 and 1965, African-American

theologian Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...

Howard Thurman Howard Washington Thurman (November 18, 1899 – April 10, 1981) was an American author, philosopher, theologian, mystic, educator, and civil rights leader. As a prominent religious figure, he played a leading role in many social justice movements ...

presided the chapel as its dean. Thurman exerted an enormous influence on the work of

Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...

leader

Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...

, who studied at Boston University.

Other notable figures associated with Marsh Chapel

* Robert Cummings Neville, one of the

Boston Confucians The Boston Confucians are a group of New Confucians from Boston, of whom the best known are Tu Wei-Ming of Harvard, and John Berthrong and Robert Neville of Boston University. Boston Confucianism belongs to the larger discussion of what it mean ...

, served as a dean of the chapel

References

{{Coord, 42.3507, -71.1064, region:US-MA, display=title Buildings at Boston University University and college chapels in the United States Religious buildings and structures in Boston