Rockefeller Memorial Chapel

Rockefeller’s magnificent tiled Gothic ceiling.
Photo by Dan Dry.

Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, with its Interreligious Center, serves as the hub of spiritual life at the University of Chicago, offering diverse religious events and ceremonies on a daily basis, as well as regular interreligious gatherings. In addition, Rockefeller hosts major performing arts and academic events, and serves as the locus for University-wide gatherings and celebrations of many different kinds, including Convocations. The Chapel was built with a grandeur of scale and intent, and is used today in ways which play to its strengths: speaking to the nobility of the human capacity for awe and profound quest for meaning.

The Dean and Spiritual Life staff take a lead in addressing the complex and often contradictory issues related to practiced religion on campus and in society at large, working with colleagues in the University and wider community to shape a broad and inclusive interreligious life for the 21st century – an engaged pluralism consonant with the values of a proudly secular institution and cognizant of the need to create respectful human religious encounter grounded in rigorous inquiry.

In particular, Rockefeller offers:

• Interreligious programs emphasizing integrative spiritual practice and community action; and citywide interreligious events.
• Sunday morning worship of the kind uniquely expressed in cathedral-like settings, matching magnificence of stone with beauty of sound, and drawing upon world musical settings of the historic liturgical texts of the Christian tradition; with the Rockefeller Chapel Choir, the magnificent E.M. Skinner organ, and Laura Spelman Rockefeller carillon.
• Dedicated prayer spaces for Hindu and Muslim students.
• Meditation spaces for Buddhists and others interested in experiencing meditation and contemplative prayer.
• Restorative yoga and drumming circles and other programs designed to speak to all the senses.
• Shared meeting space for student religious organizations.
• Music, theatre, and other arts programs complementing this great space; choral arts, including the Rockefeller, Motet, and University choirs; carillon and organ lessons and performance.
• A place simply to be quiet for a while, or to seek inspiration.