Advocates at a Wichita State University town hall meeting agreed Friday that the university chapel was meant to be open to people of all races and creeds but disagreed on what that means.
Supporters of recent renovations that removed rows of pews from the historic structure said they think it should be a space where people of all creeds can feel welcome and worship in their own tradition.
“Be not afraid, everybody is not out to get you,” said the Rev. Christopher Eshelman, a United Methodist associate pastor and former campus minister at WSU.
He was one of the original proponents of removing the chapel’s pews and replacing them with movable chairs, an idea born among campus Christians in 2012 that became a reality, with support from the campus Muslim community, in May.
Lisa Ritchie, the sole renovation opponent on the four-member town hall panel, said she thinks the chapel was originally intended to be and should be a Christian house of worship.
And while she acknowledged it should be open to all races and faiths – one of the original conditions on the donation grant that built the chapel – she said it should be “welcoming to all to point them to Jesus.”
The town-hall meeting was promised by university president John Bardo after an Oct. 2 Facebook post brought the chapel renovation to the national media stage.
Despite a Royals World Series game on TV and cold, rainy weather, about 60 people made their way to the Marcus Welcome Center at WSU to discuss the chapel’s past and future.
In the Facebook post that started it all, WSU alumna and donor Jean Ann Cusick complained about the “accommodation” of Muslim students, who have brought in a prayer rug and use the chapel for daily prayers. Cusick did not attend Friday’s town hall.
Taben Azad, a WSU student senator and vice president of the Muslim students association, said he was dismayed that the changes at the chapel had brought out numerous online expressions of “hate speech” and “Islamophobia.”
Asserting that WSU is the most diverse of the state’s university campuses, Azad said “we need to stand against racism of all types.”
Earlier, Ritchie had quoted from documents of the extremist Muslim Brotherhood organization that one of their goals was to “destroy the western civilization from within.”
Chandler Williams, a WSU graduate student, a Christian and a proponent of the chapel change, answered that by citing the example of the Phelps family and their anti-gay, funeral-picketing Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka.
“Every religion has extremists,” she said. “They ruin it for the rest of us. ... Disagreement is not a problem, disrespect is a problem.”
Williams and Eshelman decried the fact that their efforts to make the chapel a more flexible and useful worship space had been characterized as a “Muslim takeover” by conservative news sites across the nation, including the Fox News Network, which called it “Christian cleansing” in an opinion piece.
Much of the evening was given over to examining the history of the chapel, built in honor of Harvey D. Grace with a donation by his widow, the late Rachel Grace.
The university administration has maintained that Rachel Grace specifically wanted the chapel to be used by all faiths and cited the grant documents’ language that it be open to all races and creeds.
However, Ritchie said her research showed that Rachel Grace wanted the chapel to be similar to a Presbyterian chapel on Broadway.
Ritchie said that shows Grace wanted it to be a Christian chapel.
“I’m sad that this Christian chapel has been turned into an interfaith building,” she said.
WSU vice president Eric Sexton said the university interpreted the wording about similarity to the Presbyterian chapel to be architectural instruction.
Ritchie also said that if the Muslims want to pray, there’s a mosque near the campus where they could.
“We all believe differently, and we all have our places to worship,” she said.
Azad, however, said trying to go off-campus to pray five times a day would take students away from their classes for too long.
“Just because there is a nearby mosque doesn’t mean we have to push them out,” Azad said.
Sexton said a committee overseeing the chapel will consider the input from the town hall meeting and may make changes.