CHAPEL VIEW
WINTER 2023 magazine
Winter 2024 1
DUKE CHAPEL NATIONAL ADVISORY BOARD CHAIR Grace Lee, T ’79 VICE CHAIR T. Walker Robinson, T ’00, G ’01, M ’09, H ’12 EMERITUS MEMBER William E. King, T ’61, G ’63, G ’70 ADVISORY BOARD Lauren Allen, T ’25 D. Michael Bennett, T ’77 Charles Berardesco, T ’80 John A. Bussian III, T ’76 M. Keith Daniel, T ’90, D ’05, D ’16 Ellen Davis Thomas Felgner, T ’94, B ’95 Cathy S. Gilliard, D ’97 Elizabeth Grantland, T ’20 Zach Heater, T ’17 Sara Elizabeth H. Jones, T ’89 Southgate Jones III Carole Ann Klove, N ’80 Kenneth Lee, T ’74 Arthur Maxwell Powell II, D ’24 Hananiel Setiawan, G ’24 Sanyin Siang, E ’96, B ’02 Max Sirenko, T ’11 Valerie Henry Sirenko, T ’11 CHAPEL STAFF OFFICE OF THE DEAN The Rev. Dr. Luke A. Powery, Dean Ava West, Assistant to the Dean The Rev. Leah Torrey, Director of Special Initiatives MINISTRY The Rev. Bruce Puckett, Assistant Dean The Rev. Kathryn Lester-Bacon, Director of Religious Life The Rev. Racquel C. N. Gill, Minister for Intercultural Engagement Angela Flynn, Worship and Ministry Coordinator MUSIC Dr. Zebulon Highben, Director of Chapel Music Dr. Philip Cave, Conductor-in-Residence Chad Fothergill, Chapel Organist David Faircloth, Program Coordinator for Chapel Music Dr. Robert Parkins, University Organist John Santoianni, Ethel Sieck Carrabina Curator of Organs and Harpsichords Katelyn MacDonald, Staff Specialist Mitchell Eithun, Chapel Carillonneur Aaron Colston, Chapel Carillonneur Katherine Johnson, Organ Scholar ADMINISTRATION Amanda Millay Hughes, Director of Development and Strategy Joni Harris, Director of Business and Facilities James Todd, Communications Manager The Rev. Jeff Compton-Nelson, Associate Director of Development Nathan Dove, Communications Specialist Jimmy Paton, Development Marketing Specialist Lisa Best, Accounting Specialist and Office Coordinator Erica Thomas, Staff Assistant for Development Karen Jones, Wedding Director Leslie Ballew, Wedding Director and Visitor Relations Assistant Binta Watkins, Wedding Assistant Ann Hall, Visitor Relations Assistant Ken Davenport, Visitor Relations Assistant Benny Edwards, Visitor Relations Assistant Prerana Deshpande, Visitor Relations Assistant Larry Efird, Visitor Relations Assistant Oscar Dantzler, University Housekeeper Beverly Jordan, University Housekeeper Duke Schools Abbreviation Key: D (Divinity School); E (Pratt School of Engineering) G (Graduate School); MD (School of Medicine) T (Trinity College of Arts & Sciences); WC (Women’s College)
The Chapel pews were full for a screening on October 1 of the 1925 silent film The Phantom of the Opera with live, improvised accompaniment by organist Peter Richard Conte.
Remembering the Past to Envision the Future A Message from Chapel Dean Luke A. Powery Dear Friends, These seasons of Advent and Christmas are times when we look to the past for a way forward into the future. We look back to the birth of Christ to see the future glory of God and peace on earth. We look back to the prophecy that “the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel” (Matthew 1:23, NRSV), so that we can move forward knowing that God is with us. We look all the way back to the beginnings of the world when “the Word was with God and the Word was God” (John 1:1), so that we can face tomorrow believing that “the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it” (John 1:5). In our own Duke Chapel history, we look back ninety years to our first performance of G. F. Handel’s Messiah, and we also carry this beloved tradition into the future with three Messiah concerts this year. Handel’s masterwork itself beautifully weaves together the anticipation of the coming Messiah—“his name shall be called Wonderful Counsellor”—with great promises for the future—“the dead shall be raised incorruptible.” In this issue of Chapel View magazine, you will see examples of this pattern of remembering and envisioning—a kind of call and response. My colleague Rev. Racquell Gil, the Chapel’s minister for intercultural engagement, resurfaces the preaching, writing, and poetry of the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray to provide students with a model for faithfully integrating multiple identities and working for reform. Our conductor-in-residence, Dr. Philip Cave, reaches back 400 years to the compositions of William Byrd to bring forward fresh renditions of the praise and passion in Byrd’s sacred music. I, too, lean on those who have come before me to shape my vision of preaching, pastoring, and leading here at Duke Chapel. In doing that, I utilize a rich resource in the Duke Chapel Recordings online archive with more than 3,500 sermon manuscripts and audio and video 2 CHAPEL VIEW Magazine
recordings of services. You will find, in this issue, my reflections on a sermon delivered at the Chapel in 1979 by an influential figure in my thinking, the Rev. Dr. Howard Thurman. You can hear in the recording of the sermon how Dr. Thurman was someone who preached knowing that he was in the presence of God. It is not only at the Chapel where people are looking back in order to look forward. Beginning in January, all of Duke University will begin a Centennial celebration with the aim of recognizing the university’s past and looking toward the potential of its future. You are a part of the Chapel’s past—and its future. The support of so many people over the decades has built vibrant programs in student engagement, Christian worship, sacred music and the arts, and community engagement. Your support today means that in five, ten, twenty years, the Gospel will be preached afresh from the Chapel’s pulpit, current undergraduates will be returning to the Chapel to get married, and a new set of voices will be rehearsing to sing, “Hallelujah!” Yours with grace and peace,
Luke A. Powery Dean of Duke University Chapel
Duke Chapel Then and Now
Left: Students line up in front of Duke Chapel for Commencement, which was held in Page Auditorium, in 1931. Right: Students walk into the Chapel for a Baccalaureate Service in 2023.
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uke University was established in 1924 when James B. Duke, through the Indenture of Trust, designated a gift that transformed Trinity College into a comprehensive research university. In 2024, Duke launches a celebration of its centennial—a historic opportunity to recognize Duke’s extraordinary past, communicate the impact of the present, and look toward the potential of Duke’s future. It all begins on January 9, 2024, with a grand opening ceremony in Cameron Indoor Stadium, featuring musical performances, special guests, multimedia elements, and more. Duke Chapel is contributing to the university’s Centennial Celebration, which will run for more than a year, with a concert on April 14, 2024, that celebrates the musical legacy of the composer and jazz pianist Mary Lou Williams. Williams was a composer and jazz pianist who taught at Duke, and occasionally performed in the Chapel and with the Duke Chapel Choir. She wrote for Duke Ellington and Benny Goodman, and mentored artists such as Charlie Parker and Thelonius Monk. Her works are an “encyclopedia of black music” (Newsweek) that fuse religious themes with the idioms of jazz. The program, presented by the Chapel Choir and guest artists, will include excerpts from Williams’s albums Music for Peace (Mary Lou’s Mass) and Black Christ of the Andes, as well as works by Duke Ellington and Robert Ray. Look for Centennial updates, including more events by the Chapel, at 100.duke.edu.
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Student Engagement
Pauli Murray
Integrating Identities in Faith
The Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray as a Resource for Engaging Students
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bout a mile from Duke’s campus, a National Historic Landmark in Durham’s West End neighborhood marks the childhood home of the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray. The late Rev. Dr. Murray was a lawyer who influenced civil rights leaders, a historian who chronicled her family’s multiracial history through the Civil War, and a Christian who was the first African American woman ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church. In the life and writings of Murray, the Rev. Racquel Gill (pictured above speaking), the Chapel’s minister for intercultural engagement, sees a wealth of material for engaging students in conversations about faith, identity, and contemporary issues. “People often talk about [Murray’s] life in and of itself as being a testament of border crossing and boundary crossing and category crossing,” Rev. Gill says. “We really see them owning fully their ancestry—what it means to be the descendant of both white and black folks, what it means to be a descendant of Cherokee heritage. Pauli describes her own family as a kind of United Nations meeting.” (Gill explains that she uses both “they/them” and “she/ her” pronouns when referring to Murray as a way to acknowledge the complexity of Murray’s gender identity.) This fall, Gill has been leading a weekly Bible study called “Text Messages” that looks at how the Scriptures can speak to contemporary issues from navigating personal 4 CHAPEL VIEW Magazine
relationships to being a Christian in a fraternity or sorority. One source she is drawing on for those discussions is a Christian education curriculum based on Murray’s life and legacy that was developed by the nonprofit Pauli Murray Center. (Gill was among the clergy who provided feedback as part of the curriculum development process.) “All throughout [Murray’s] journey, we see a constant rootedness in faith and a rootedness in a faith community,” Gill says. “Several of the topics Pauli was engaging sermonically, poetically, and in some of their prayers, they’re the same issues that we’re wrestling with today—the role of gender and identity, church leadership, … and the legacy of slavery.” Gill first dug into Murray’s writing when she was a student at Duke Divinity School and was asked to preach at a service being held by a local Episcopal Church honoring Murray as a saint. “My own sense of exploration that I was having about my own identity—being young, being black, being a woman, being clergy, and also exploring identity around sexuality—I really found Pauli to be a model for me and somebody who really made me feel that I was not alone,” she says. “I hope that I can offer that to students. I hope that the way that they were a model for me during a challenging time in Durham, that they can be a model for so many others.”
Finding the Beauty of God in Music and Community A Faith and Learning Profile of Joseph Scarpa
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hen Duke senior Joseph (Joey) Scarpa plays the Aeolian organ in Duke Chapel, he says it’s a visceral experience. “Even in this space with these massive stone walls, you still feel the building shake a little bit,” says Scarpa, who is taking lessons from University Organist Robert Parkins in preparation for giving an organ recital in the Chapel in the spring. “There’s nothing quite like that.” “I wanted to get started playing the organ when I was four and I heard it in church,” explains Scarpa, who is from Old Bethpage, New York. “I asked my mom if I could play, and she, of course, said, ‘No,’ so I consider playing organ a little bit of a rebellion.” (Joking aside, he says his mother has been a strong supporter of his organ playing since he began as a teenager.) “When I was applying to colleges, I knew that having a place to study organ in an institution that takes that seriously was a high priority for me,” says Scarpa, who sings in the Duke Chapel Choir and the Chapel’s Evensong Singers in addition to playing organ. “The instruments here are just absolutely stunning.” A computer science major, Scarpa only recently added music as a second major. He made the decision
“Even beyond the beauty of the space itself or the beauty of the music, I would say it’s the beauty of being there in a community with fellow believers and fellow musicians, all to create music in praise of God.” — Joseph Scarpa after spending a summer doing research in computer science. “While I was very honored to be a part of the research, what I found was that research was not in my vocation—I didn’t really have the passion nor the calling to do research,” he says. “And so I said, ‘Well, if I’ve already done the computer science major requirements, maybe I should add on a major and what a better choice than music?’” Music is also part of Scarpa’s faith as a Catholic. He contributes to the Duke Catholic Center’s music ministry as a singer and regular organist at Masses. “In terms of my faith here at Duke, when I got here, I was just sort of going through the motions, as a lot of young people are,” he says. “Since I’ve been here—and especially through the context of music, playing organ and also singing at Mass—it’s really become a much more integral part of my identity.”
Scarpa sees a connection between his faith and both of his majors. “I think there’s a wide cross-appeal between computer science and music with their formality and structure—it’s a very beautiful thing,” says Scarpa who recently joined the ecumenical Chapel Scholars program. “We can also think about that beauty when we view our relationship to God and contemplate things beyond ourselves.” That beauty is what Scarpa says continues to draw him to make music in Duke Chapel. “Even beyond the beauty of the space itself or the beauty of the music, I would say it’s the beauty of being there in a community with fellow believers and fellow musicians, all to create music in praise of God,” he says. “It truly is a gratifying experience.” Watch a video version of this profile at chapel.duke.edu/faithandlearning.
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Vibrant, Varied Religious Practices on Campus Every week at Duke, leaders of campus Religious Life groups hold dozens of meetings, services, and ceremonies that provide students with the opportunity to gather with fellow believers and practice their faith. There are twenty-two Religious Life groups at Duke with approximately 1,800 student members. Duke Chapel oversees and supports these groups as part of its mission to “bridge faith and learning.” This photo essay provides a glimpse at the varied and vibrant religious practices regularly occurring at locations across campus. The photographs are by: Kaushik Chinnaraj, a graduate student in the Pratt School of Engineering; Nathan Dove, Chapel communications specialist; Easwar Paidipalli, a Pratt graduate student; Brianna Smith, a Duke senior; and James Todd, Chapel communications manager.
The Rev. David Allen, pastor of the Duke Wesley Fellowship, holds a midweek communion service on October 11 in the group’s meeting room in the lower level of Duke Chapel.
Members of Duke’s Muslim community participate in a Jumu’ah Prayer service on October 20 in McClendon Tower. The Center for Muslim Life holds the prayers on Fridays at 1:00 p.m., which include addresses by Muslim Chaplain Joshua Salaam or Imam Abdul Waheed.
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Members of the Hindu Student Association sing at Navaratri, a celebration of the goddess Durga, on October 24 in Duke Chapel. The students were supported in organizing the service by Chaplain Priya Amaresh with Hindu Life at Duke.
The Rev. Prasert Ammartek, Duke’s Buddhist chaplain, leads students with the Buddhist Meditation Community in a mindfulness session on September 25 in the Student Wellness Center.
Students with Duke Asian InterVarsity sing during their large group meeting on October 12 in the Divinity School’s York Room.
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Fr. Andrew LaBudde, assistant chaplain and faith formation coordinator for the Duke Catholic Center, presides at a Mass on October 22 in Goodson Chapel.
Rabbi Elana Friedman, Campus Rabbi and Jewish Chaplain for Duke University, looks on as Emma Hirschkop, T ’22, reads from the Torah scroll using a “Yad” or Jewish ritual pointer. Every year, students participate in Jewish Life at Duke’s B’nai Mitzvah program, which offers students who did not become b’nai mitzvah as preteens to take part in this milestone ritual during their time at Duke. Photo courtesy of Jewish Life at Duke.
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Chapel Scholars gather for fellowship and a meal at a kickoff event on October 24 in the Divinity School’s Alumni Memorial Commons Room.
Chapel Scholars Learn, Serve, Pray in Christian Community “Are you ready to meet God and discover more of who God has made you to be?” That’s what Chapel Dean Luke Powery asked the students joining the Chapel Scholars program during their commissioning in a Sunday service this fall. Thirty-five new Scholars joined another fifty-four existing scholars in an interdenominational community of Christian students who pray, worship, serve, and study together. These Chapel Scholars are from Sri Lanka, South Korea, and South Africa—as well as Sacramento, St. Louis, Winston-Salem, and elsewhere—who are aspiring to be physicists, doctors, social workers, and investment bankers, among other professions. What they have in common is a desire to engage life with God through programming at the Chapel that nurtures and embodies the ethical, intellectual, and spiritual life.
New ‘Say the Thing’ Initiative Prompts Students to Make Meaning Duke Chapel and the Kenan Institute for Ethics have launched a new initiative called “Say the Thing” that uses technologies old and new to gather students to wrestle with life's hard questions—and to question their own answers. The Rev. Leah Torrey, the Chapel’s director of special initiatives, leads Say the Thing, which currently has two programs. Through “the Studio,” groups of students meet weekly to share and examine their life stories in conversation with their classmates and the big ideas of thinkers such as Ocean Vuong, Richard Feynman, Mary Oliver, and Malcolm X. The “Lark” program meets students where they are on campus— on the Bryan Center Plaza, in front of Lilly Library, in the Rubenstein Arts Center—with projects, such as the screen printing (pictured right), that combine fun with self-discovery.
Students participate in a Say the Thing project to make new art out of old clothes, held on September 14 on the Bryan Center Plaza. Winter 2023 9
Sacred Music and the Arts Art Exhibitions Combine Chinese Culture and Christian Themes
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his fall the Chapel presented paintings, photographs, and drawings by Chinese Christian artists in a pair of exhibitions through a partnership with Duke Initiatives in Theology and the Arts. Matter + Spirit: A Chinese/American Exhibition displayed work by seventeen contemporary Chinese and American artists engaging perennial tensions between the material and the spiritual in human life. The exhibition included a photographic study of rural Chinese churches, pencil drawings that signal the sacredness of the human subject by creating an implied halo, and an oil painting interpreting the biblical account of Jesus’s meal at the village of Emmaus. The second exhibition comprised paintings by the Chinese artist DaoZi, who works in a style called “Sacred Ink Wash Painting,” which combines traditional Chinese ink painting techniques and materials with themes infused with his Christian faith. As part of the exhibition, Transcendence + Immanence: The Sacred Ink Wash Art of DaoZi, the artist came to Duke for an opening reception, a public lecture, and visits to Divinity School classes. At the reception, Chapel musicians led attendees in singing hymns set to traditional Chinese tunes. Two additional campus cosponsors of the exhibition and related events were Duke’s Asian/Pacific Studies Institute and the Divinity School’s Asian House of Studies. 10 CHAPEL VIEW Magazine
The artist DaoZi, right, presents one of his ink-wash icon paintings as a gift to Duke Divinity School.
Artwork from recent exhibitions (clockwise from top-right): Yong You, Cheers, 2016, oil on wood; The Crown of Thorns (triptych), 2018, ink and gold on paper; and detail of The Crown of Thorns.
William Byrd
Carrying Forward a Living Musical Tradition Dr. Philip Cave Curates the Music of William Byrd
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ombing beauty and artistry in praise of God, music in Chapel worship services is drawn from composers spanning many centuries. This summer brought a focus in Chapel services on early music repertoire with the 400th anniversary of the death of the church musician William Byrd, whom the New York Times called “an essential English composer for four centuries.” The occasion prompted the Chapel to hold two worship services in August that featured Byrd’s music, which were conducted by Dr. Philip Cave (pictured above), the Chapel’s conductor-inresidence. “Byrd’s sacred music represents a pinnacle of personal devotion and craftsmanship,” says Dr. Cave, who is the conductor of the Chapel’s Evensong Singers and Vespers Ensemble, and director of the Bach Cantata Series. “He wrote for just about every genre that was available to him in the sixteenth century— including instrumental music, sacred and secular vocal music—and he developed a style which I think was
very individual.” Influences from Byrd’s historical situation can still be heard in his music, Cave says. As a Roman Catholic in England during the Protestant Reformation, Byrd was in a precarious position. “He was writing music in a climate that was very difficult, where his Roman Catholic religion was very much ostracized,” says Cave. “Many of Byrd’s sacred works express his own deep and passionate faith, his distress about what was happening to his fellow Catholics, and the persecution that many were enduring.” Byrd’s music not only elucidates religious history, Cave explains, it is also an important bridge between the Renaissance and Baroque eras. “Byrd always had a wonderful sense of rhythm,” he says. “Little phrases pop out here and there with a kind of irresistible energy.” “He was also very aware of the new Italianate harmonic language that was becoming popular in England,” Cave says. “Composers in the late sixteenth century were becoming much more
aware of the impact of harmony—key relationships, chords used to startling effect—which Byrd managed really finely.” Working in a university setting, Cave is a teacher of early sacred music through his leadership of the Vespers Ensemble and Evensong Singers as well as the Chorworks summer program held at the Chapel. He also brings a wealth of experience to his role at the Chapel, having performed, toured, and recorded with the United Kingdom’s leading vocal ensembles before coming to Duke. “It has been a satisfying challenge to sing this music here at Duke,” he says. “Although we are in a very different political, social, and liturgical era from Byrd’s time, we approach his music as something which is still living—a tradition that still has relevance to modern ears and minds.” See the musical themes for upcoming Choral Evensong services at chapel.duke.edu/evensong.
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The choir at the Whitefriar Street Church in Dublin with the prior of the parish.
International Choir Tour Finds Blessings in Music and Friendship
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he Duke Chapel Choir went on an international tour this summer for the first time in more than seven years. Over the course of ten days in Ireland and Scotland, the choir performed in two services and five concerts, presenting repertoire ranging from Felix Mendelssohn’s “Hear My Prayer” to the black spiritual “We Shall Walk Through the Valley” to a sixteenth-century Latin motet based on Psalm 67. The tour was a way to share beautiful sacred music in historic, majestic settings. And, according to people on the tour, it was also an opportunity for the choir to deepen their sense of community, refine their craft, renew relationships, and experience moments of providence. The tour comprised a stay in Dublin, Ireland, and stops in three cities in Scotland: Glasgow, Edinburgh, and St. Andrews. The locations were new for a Chapel Choir tour and yet were rich in culture and church history. The first stop was Whitefriar Street Church in Dublin, a Catholic parish run by Carmelite friars that dates to the thirteenth century; there, the choir sang all of the choral parts of the morning Mass. “We started with worship, and we ended in St. Andrews with a morning worship service and an afternoon concert,” said Dr. Zebulon Highben, director of Chapel Music. “So, although we mostly did concerts, we bookended the trip 12 CHAPEL VIEW Magazine
with worship services, which felt appropriate.” On a trip outside of Dublin to visit the sixth-century Glendalough monastery, the choir had the opportunity, not often granted to tourists, to venture inside an ancient stone church nicknamed “St. Kevin’s Kitchen.” Packed into the small stone building, the group was moved to sing a piece from their tour repertoire—“The Spirit of the Lord,” an original composition by Dr. Highben based on texts from the Book of Isaiah and Psalm 72. “It was just one of those moments you get on tour and you can’t get anywhere else,” said choir member Mary Anderson who, along with Elaine Brown, served as a volunteer tour coordinator. “It was magical, and by the looks on everyone’s faces, everyone knew it was magical while it was happening.” Another moment unique to the tour was singing a midday concert in the middle of the massive St. Giles’ Cathedral in Edinburgh. “As we were singing this concert, the tourists kept literally circling us, taking pictures, and making recordings,” Highben said. “Part of international travel is that all of these tourists, they’re absorbing maybe five minutes of your performance, but that may be an important part of their memories of their travel to that country.” A joint concert with the Glasgow University Chapel Choir
Left: The choir performs at Glasgow Cathedral. Right: A group of choir members, along with Assistant Dean Bruce Puckett, attended a concert by the pop star Harry Styles—and snapped a selfie.
at Glasgow University Memorial Chapel, which included the two choirs singing together “We Shall Walk Through the Valley,” received a standing ovation. It was also an opportunity for reunions. Dr. Bill McCulloch, a former choir member who rejoined the group for the tour, got to sing at his alma mater, and a Glasgow University student reconnected with Highben after having met him on a previous tour in 2018. Performing mostly the same repertoire day-in-and-dayout was a change of pace for the choir, since they typically sing a song once for a Sunday service and then move on. “Getting to do the pieces multiple times was super special to me,” said Anna Cambron, a choir member and Duke graduate student in classical studies. She gave the example of the piece “Endless Radiance,” composed by fellow choir member Chris Williams. “When we tried to do it at Duke Chapel,” she said, “it was a very difficult piece to sing, but we finally hit our stride with it when we were on the tour.” Williams, a graduate student in music at Duke, said it was a valuable part of his education to have one of his compositions sung in venues that he had previously known only by reputation. “I couldn’t have imagined how great it was getting to hear it not only grow as the ensemble got to know it even better but just the chance to hear it in all of these incredible acoustics,” he said. “I feel grateful and also very humbled by that.” Choir members agreed that the time traveling, socializing, and sightseeing was just as valuable as the time spent in rehearsals and performances. Chapel Dean Luke Powery and Assistant Dean Bruce Puckett were on the tour to support the singers and to be a pastoral presence. One night, a group of younger choir members took the chance to go to a concert by the English pop star Harry Styles. “The social bonds of the tour are really the thing that has
stuck,” said Cambron. “Usually [at Duke], we come to rehearsal, we see each other on Sunday, but [on the tour] to spend a lot of time together and to do things together other than singing, I found out so many things about the people in this choir that I just didn’t know.” “It was coming back to something we really love to do after some really disruptive years,” said Anderson about the COVID pandemic’s interruption of the choir. “To get to sing together on this scale and to get to share that with other people was beautiful.” Watch videos from the tour at chapel.duke.edu/choirtour.
On December 10, 1933, the Duke Chapel Choir presented a concert of “selections from Handel’s Messiah,” and a beloved Duke University holiday tradition was born. This year’s Messiah concerts mark the ninetieth anniversary of that first performance. In music that is both treasured and timeless, G. F. Handel’s masterwork continues to recount the story of humanity’s redemption through the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ. Winter 2024 13
Christian Worship
Music and Ministry Interns Serve and Learn Each year, the Chapel welcomes new interns for ministry and music who serve during Sunday morning worship services and throughout the week. Additionally, for the second year in a row, the Chapel is hosting the American Guild of Organists Organ Scholar Program. “The Chapel’s interns are an important part of the work we do with students and the worshiping community,” says the Rev. Bruce Puckett, assistant dean of the Chapel. “While these internships are a blessing for the Chapel community, they also provide the interns with experiences that equip them for a broad range of future career and vocational opportunities.”
Mitchell Eithun, Intern for Chapel Music, holds a bachelor of arts from Ripon College and a master of science from Michigan State University. A Divinity student, he has over sixty published pieces of handbell music and has ministry experience as a handbell director, digital ministry intern, and campus pastor. His current interests lie in hymnody, digital ministry, and spiritual formation in music ensembles. He also serves as one of the Chapel carillonneurs.
The Intern for Intercultural and Interreligious Engagement, Max Miller is a third-year Divinity student from Falls Church, Virginia. He is pursuing ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). His interests include Old Testament Studies and broader religious studies, especially the study of multiple religious traditions.
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Andrew Plasker, the Intern for Worship and Student Engagement, is a second-year student in the Divinity School, pursuing a master of divinity degree with a certificate in Anglican studies. As a lay Catholic, his ministerial interests are in Anglican-Catholic dialogues and medical chaplaincy. His academic interests lie in the history of American Christianity and development of the Prosperity Gospel.
Katherine Johnson is this year’s organ scholar in the American Guild of Organists Organ Scholar Program at Duke Chapel. She earned a double-degree in English and organ performance at Oberlin College and Conservatory. She has served as organist and music director at Church of the Redeemer in Lorain, Ohio, and the Wilson Family Sacred Music Intern at the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York City. She has also been an organ scholar at Plymouth Church UCC in Shaker Heights, Ohio, and St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Greenville, North Carolina.
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A Preacher from the Past Speaks to the Present
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he Duke Chapel Recordings digital archive on the Duke sweep the fact that I am a creature, Libraries website holds more locked in the earth as the pillars of the than 3,500 sermon manuscripts and arch, [and yet] something deep at my audio and video recordings. The trove center ... reaches into infinity like the of online services and sermons is a sweep of the Gothic arch. resource for ministers, scholars, and The audio recording, made two students. Below Chapel Dean Luke years before Thurman’s death, capPowery cites the value of one audio tures not only his words that recording in the collection. reverberate in the Chapel but also his On January 21, 1979, the late extended pauses. theologian Howard Thurman, an “As a preacher, he had a sense of important influence for pause, which he even called ‘a Martin Luther King, Jr. sacrament of pause,’” Dean and other civil rights Powery explains. “When he’s leaders, preached a preaching, it’s almost as if he’s sermon at the Chapel talking to God.” titled Jesus Christ and “He leaves room for the the Gothic Principle. It Spirit; he leaves room for the was based on the Living Word to speak between account of the temptahis words,” Powery says. “That tion of Christ in the definitely comes across.” Gospel of Matthew. Another aspect of the Midway through the sermon that was characterissermon, Thurman cites Howard Thurman tic of Thurman was dealing Jesus’s words “Man does with paradoxes. not live by bread alone but by every “It’s about the integration of the word that issues from the mouth of outer life and the inner life,” Powery God” (Matthew 4:4). From that, he says. “It’s about the earthly and the draws a conclusion about the human divine—that’s the dualism he talks condition that he sees illustrated in the about in that sermon.” shape of the Chapel’s Gothic arches: “He calls [the sermon] Jesus Christ I shall recognize that life is practical, and the Gothic Principle,” Powery says. that I must have bread, I must live by “And who is Jesus Christ? Both human bread, but there are needs of another and divine.” kind that I have, and I must provide for For Powery, Thurman is not only an them. The bias, the accent, the emphaobject of historical study but an sis of my life must take in its creative ongoing influence. The title of one of 16 CHAPEL VIEW Magazine
Powery’s recent books, Becoming Human: The Holy Spirit and the Rhetoric of Race, comes from a remembrance about Martin Luther King, Jr. that Thurman gave following King’s assassination, in which Thurman said, “May [King] live because all of us in America are closer to becoming human than ever before.” The book grew out of a lecture series Powery gave titled “Searching for Common Ground” that built on Thurman’s book The Search for Common Ground. “The inspiration was what Thurman says in The Search for Common Ground in the preface,” Powery says. “He recognized that most of his life, he’d been following a scent; and that scent was the ties that bind us, and that resonates so deeply with me.” In addition to citing Thurman in his scholarly work, Powery teaches a course on Thurman through Duke Divinity School. “In terms of the themes of his work—love, hate, talking about experiences of fellowship that are necessary, reverence of personality of other human beings—he is spot on for our time,” Powery says. “And I think that’s why there’s a lot of interest in him—because his message still rings true without a doubt.”
Congregation Pastor Carol Gregg to Retire After a decade of faithful service as Pastor of the Congregation at Duke Chapel, the Rev. Dr. Carol Gregg plans to retire from her role. Pastor Carol (as she is called) has been such a blessing to so many people—in public services and private visits—for so many years. She will be dearly missed.
A Multigenerational Family of Faith Three people from three generations were baptized in the Chapel’s Sunday morning service on April 30: AJ McClure, a member of the Congregation at Duke Chapel; Tim Southam, a Duke law student; and Nomi Stoe Oliver, the daughter of Carolyn Stoe and Luke Oliver, a Divinity School student. Although they are not related by blood, they are now part of a multigenerational family in Christ. Pictured from left to right are: Pastor Carol Gregg, McClure, the Stoe-Oliver family, and Southam.
Accolades for Dean Powery’s ‘Becoming Human’ Chapel Dean Luke Powery’s Becoming Human: The Holy Spirit and the Rhetoric of Race has been named Book of the Year for 2023 by two organizations. “The care and love and gentleness with which Powery writes leaps off the pages and straight to the heart," the Academy of Parish Clergy said in announcing their award. "We believe this book by Luke Powery will benefit all clergy who pick it up and read it carefully and closely." The Religious Communication Association also named Becoming Human its Book of the Year and invited Dean Powery to its annual conference for a panel discussion of the book.
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Community Engagement
Leading Psychologist Sees Faith as an Essential Element in Psychology
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he president of the American Psychological Association, Dr. Thema Bryant (pictured above), T ’95, G ’97, G ’00, told an audience at Duke Chapel on October 3 that faith is an integral part of the practice and research of clinical psychology while also recognizing that sometimes people are harmed by faith communities. “Psychology at its roots is built on faith—not necessarily a religious faith for all people but a belief that more is possible than what we currently embody,” said Dr. Bryant, a professor of psychology at Pepperdine University, who earned her doctorate in clinical psychology at Duke, as well as her master’s and bachelor’s degrees. “When you show up for therapy, there is the idea that I can be more than what I am right now,” she said. “If I am a psychology researcher, it is based in the faith that we can have a greater understanding of humanity…. When we are educators of psychologists, it is also a faith-walk that we 18 CHAPEL VIEW Magazine
are able to see within our students their potential.” Bryant’s remarks came in a public conversation with Chapel Dean Luke Powery for the Chapel’s 2023 William Preston Few Lecture. The event has had a combined audience of more than 1,000, including in-person attendance and online viewership of the recording. The annual lecture series takes its name from Duke’s first president and is funded by an endowment created by the Few family. “President Few articulated a vision of education promoting the courage to seek the truth and the conviction to live it, which this lecture series seeks to honor,” Dean Powery said in opening the event. “This evening, with the help of Dr. Bryant, we will continue to live into President Few’s vision, to embody Duke Chapel’s value of community, and to contribute to Duke University’s strategic vision of ‘strengthening our campus community.’” In responding to a question from Powery about objections to integrating faith and psychology, Bryant said that
mental health providers report lower levels of religious belief on average than the general public, which can lead to a dismissive attitude towards the faith of clients when in fact, “It is harmful to erase something [like faith] that gives many people meaning.” “What we have to do is hold the spectrum,” she said. “The spectrum is: For many people faith is a source of strength, support, identity, and healing, and for many people their faith experience has been connected to degradation, harm, abuse, and condemnation.” “In order to do the work, we have to admit both things are true,” she said. “We have to be willing to sit with the fullness of human experience.” Bryant is the host of the podcast Homecoming and the author of the book Homecoming: Overcome Fear and Trauma to Reclaim Your Whole Authentic Self. She is also the director of the mental health ministry at First AME Church in South Los Angeles. Answering a question about the mental health challenges of young people, she pointed to a number of factors, including a sense of isolation, comparison with peers on social media, a culture of being productive at the expense of deepening relationships, and an emphasis on putting on a good face without allowing for authentic emotions. “The truth is many of us can feel unseen,” she said. “You can walk across campus and feel invisible…. And so the hunger and longing to be known, accepted, appreciated, valued, even missed if you are not present is something that many people, including young people, are missing.” Partway through the event, Bryant demonstrated a centering exercise inviting the audience to place a hand on their hearts and inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth. She then repeated the breathing pattern, placing her hand on her stomach and then her forehead. “’Interoreceptivity’ means bodily awareness,” she said about the exercise. “You are the expert on your own experience.” Near the end of the conversation, Powery posed a question submitted by an audience member: “What one part of your faith (if you can choose!) do you feel gives you the most strength in your professional practice?” “For me, it’s resurrection,” Bryant said. “To believe, as ugly as it is, as horrific as it is, as shame-provoking as it is, as bloody as it is, as gruesome as it is, that my cross does not have the final say on my life—that it is possible to get up even from this.” Prompted to give a final message, she said, “My final word is, ‘You are worthy.’ You are worthy of care. You are worthy of respect. You are worthy of safety. You are worthy of joy.”
The audience responded with a standing ovation. Following the event, the Rev. Jackie Rodriguez, campus minister for Duke Presbyterian Campus Ministry, said she heard from Bryant “deep, grounded wisdom.” “I really, really resonated with coming home to either the heart, the head, or the gut,” Rev. Rodriguez said. A Duke graduate student in global health, Lorenna Garcia-Bochas said, “A lot of times when we are in the sciences, we don’t like to combine faith and science together, but she showed it’s actually possible and it’s important.” “I really enjoyed how it brought this community together from around Duke—people from so many different parts of the university that I interact with but it feels very scattered,” said Justin, a doctoral student in Duke’s clinical psychology program, who gave his first name. “The fact that she could come and speak to so many of those experiences at once is something I really appreciated.” In addition to her public appearance at the Chapel, during her day on campus, Bryant interacted with students, staff, faculty, and community members at a luncheon and reception, conversing informally, signing her book, and participating in group photos.
Campus cosponsors of the event were: Counseling and Psychological Services; Department of African & African American Studies; Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences; Duke Health; Office of Black Church Studies; School of Medicine; Personal Assistance Service; and Theology, Medicine, and Culture. Watch a recording of the event at chapel.duke.edu/ fewlecture.
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Bridge Internship Brings Together Duke, NCCU Students for Service and Learning The Chapel’s new Bridge Internship Program launched this summer with five student interns (from left): Will Lieber, Aryan Donikena, Sydney Wilkins, Rachel Garrett, and Ka’Niya Willingham. The program is offered in partnership with the Wesley Campus Ministry at North Carolina Central University and the NCCU Office of Spiritual Development and Dialogue, with student participants coming from both universities. Living together and working in the community, the participants considered how matters of faith shape the way they might live meaningfully and with purpose in the world, while also developing practical life skills related to work, community, and a fulfilling personal life.
New Approach to Orientation Includes Service As part of Duke’s Experiential Orientation program at the start of the fall semester, incoming students worked on two Habitat for Humanity houses. The Chapel was one of the sponsors of this Project Habitat program.
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PathWays Fellows Deepen Ties to Durham Meet this year's PathWays Fellows. Pictured clockwise from top-left are Duke Divinity School students Jude Mahendren, Mitchell Eithun, Nicky Gutierrez, and Darin Diep. The yearlong, residential PathWays Fellowship offers opportunities for vocational exploration, leadership, mentorship, service, and formation deeply rooted in the Durham community and the Fellows’ Christian traditions.
Continuing a Pilgrimage in Durham As part of an ongoing partnership with the nonprofit DurhamCares, students in the Chapel Scholars program participated in the Durham Pilgrimage of Pain and Hope on the weekend of October 27–29. Through the pilgrimage, participants learn about the history of Durham, while reflecting on how that history intersects with the stories of the Bible and their own stories. Here the pilgrimage group stops in front of a mural of the Durham native Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray.
Interfaith Effort to Provide Food to Those in Need At the start of the fall semester, the Chapel and Religious Life at Duke hosted a Crop Drop service project to help feed the local community. Over eighty volunteers—students, staff, community members, and multifaith campus ministers—bagged 760 bags of potatoes to share with local groups including Iglesia Emanuel Food Pantry, Parktown Food Hub, and Tri-Area Ministry Food Pantry. Winter 2023 21
Couple Finds a Spiritual Home and Inspiration to Support Students
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his past spring, AJ McClure took a step in his faith that had been decades in the making. He was baptized in a Sunday morning service at a large baptismal font in the crossing of Duke Chapel. “With joy and thanksgiving, we welcome you into Christ’s church to share with us in his ministry, for we are all one in Christ,” the congregation responded to the baptisms of McClure along with a law student and the child of a divinity school student (see “A Multigenerational Family of Faith” on page 17). “It was a very moving event for me,” McClure says. “Being baptized in that setting made it even more special.” “It’s now online forever somewhere,” McClure quips about the service being recorded as part of the regular livestreaming of Chapel services. That McClure’s baptism was streamed online with friends and relatives tuning in from Colorado, Ohio, Florida, Virginia, South Carolina, and North Carolina was fitting because he and his wife Barbara (Bunny) McClure, MBA ’79, have relied on the service livestreams themselves. They live in Wilmington, North Carolina, and participate virtually in Chapel services, book groups, and other meetings when they don’t have the opportunity to travel to Durham to attend in person. Both in-person and online, they have become increasingly involved in the life of the Chapel and last fall became members of the Congregation at Duke Chapel. “We just felt that we fit so well at Duke Chapel and that it was our church home,” Bunny says. “Part of our connection to the Chapel is the magnificent music; and the sermons are varied and exceptional.” While their Congregation membership is recent, their ties to the Chapel and Duke stretch back to the nineteenth century when Bunny’s paternal grandmother attended Trinity College before the school moved to Durham and became Duke University. In the 1970s, Bunny enrolled in Duke’s Fuqua School of Business and attended Chapel services as a student. As a couple, the McClures began 22 CHAPEL VIEW Magazine
AJ and Barbara McClure
attending Chapel services occasionally when the Rev. Dr. Sam Wells was dean. During the COVID pandemic, they became regular viewers of the livestreams. At the Chapel, Bunny says they are growing spiritually in a community they have found to be characterized by “acceptance, openness, and … love for all.” Beyond their own growth and service with the Chapel, the McClures are giving to the Chapel’s student ministries as a way to support the faith lives of current and future Duke students. Bunny says she appreciates the Chapel’s “faith overlay” to students’ educations that encourages them to “go out in the world and be successful but do it with the Christian value set“ remaining true to their faith. As an example of the Chapel’s role in students’ faith formation, both of the McClures point to the most recent Student Preacher, Erin Dickerson, who preached a sermon in a Sunday service last spring on Resting in the Lord. “It was a very well-thought-out and well-presented sermon,” AJ says. “She was just amazing. I really admire her so much.” The sermon showed the type of spiritual maturity, and approach to presenting the Christian faith by example, that they believe the Chapel can cultivate through student engagement.
Meet Our New Staff Members
Leslie Ballew Wedding Director and Visitor Relations Assistant
Aaron Colston Chapel Carillonneur
Katherine Johnson Organ Scholar
Karen Jones Wedding Director
The Rev. Jeff Compton-Nelson Associate Director of Development
Nathan Dove Communications Specialist
Larry Efird Visitor Relations Assistant
Jimmy Paton Development Marketing Specialist
Binta Watkins Wedding Assistant
The Rev. Prasert Ammartek Buddhist Chaplain at Duke
Chaplain Priya Amaresh Hindu Chaplain at Duke
Rabbi Elana Friedman Jewish Chaplain and Campus Rabbi at Duke
The Rev. Racquel Gill Minister for Intercultural Engagement at Duke Chapel
The Rev. Kathryn Lester-Bacon Director of Religious Life at Duke Chapel
Chaplain Joshua Salaam Muslim Chaplain and Director of Center for Muslim Life
New Chaplain Program Supports Students This fall, the Chapel’s new QuadEx Chaplains program began with six Chapel and Religious Life leaders taking on expanded roles to serve students regardless of their faith background. These chaplains (pictured right) help students negotiate the big questions and challenges of being human by working with individuals or groups who are exploring their identities and purpose, navigating loss or transition, or experiencing crisis and in need of care.
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A Tradition of Joy
Amanda M. Hughes Director of Development and Strategy Dear Friends, Where do you find Joy? Discovering more joy does not save us from the inevitability of hardship and heartbreak. In fact, we may cry more easily, but we will laugh more easily too. ― Desmond Tutu Every day at Duke Chapel, we find evidence of joy. We discover it in the beauty of our wonderful sanctuary. We see it in the faces of young people engaged in Chapel Scholars and hear it in the voices of the Chapel choirs and United in Praise. We read it in comments from our supporters who offer thanks through the online giving portal at giving.duke.edu. And we find it in one another as we cross paths during our workdays. The musicians and ministers, the Visitor Relations Assistants, and the administrative staff are often found smiling and laughing with the joy of knowing that the work we do makes a difference on this campus and in the broader world. All this joy is possible because of you and others like you who have supported Duke University and Duke Chapel for the past 100 years. As we look ahead to the Centennial Celebration, we are reminded of our opportunity to be part of this glorious tradition of joy. And we embrace the wisdom of the scriptures that remind us to give: Each of you must give as you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. ― 2 Corinthians 9.7 (NRSV) So today, I give thanks for you—“a cheerful giver”—and invite you to continue to support us with a joyful end-of-year gift. Sincerely, Amanda Millay Hughes Your gift today is 100% tax deductible. Please make your check payable to Duke Chapel and mail to: Alumni and Development Records Duke University Box 90581 Durham, NC 27708-0581 For information about credit card or stock gifts, please contact Erica Thomas for assistance at (919) 684-5955 or at chapeldevelopment@duke.edu or gifts.duke.edu/chapel. 24 CHAPEL VIEW Magazine
Students David Ntim and Riley Hamp shared about their experiences as Chapel Scholars during the Sunday morning service on August 27—and then they took a selfie!
Do More Than You Thought Possible Current gifts are vitally important and allow Duke Chapel to continue its mission and ministry. Investing in the Chapel’s future can yield invaluable returns to students, faculty, and the Duke community for generations. With help from our expert team, along with your personal tax and legal advisors, your gift can also be part of your own charitable planning for the future.
Connect with us today to explore how giving to Duke can also help you realize your personal and financial goals. Call (919) 681-0464 or visit giving.duke.edu/giftplanning to get started.