Mandatory Chapel at Bible College

Grading?

Though Christianity purports to operate under the auspices of grace and generally claims that church attendance isn’t something God grades you on, Christian culture doesn’t see it that way. All that Christ-given freedom could get out of hand. That there freedom needs some good old-fashioned, Torah-caliber parameters. They can’t just let those students roam around free, pointing their bodies wherever it seems like a good idea. Leave it to religious institutions to take something wildly esoteric and beautiful (such as the gathering of believers in worship) and then find a way to monitor people’s performance and grade them on it. Christian colleges know they can’t actually make you worship, but they can make you appear to worship, and that’s good enough for them.

Worship

So how exactly do you appear to worship? If they could read your mind or inventory your heart they would, but they must settle for counting your presence in the chapel. In spite of all this chapel enthusiasm, you don’t have to attend every day. Some schools require 3 chapel attendances a week, some say seventeen per semester, etc. This of course engenders criminal mischief as students seek to evade chapel attendance. At schools where video imaging is used, seniors pay the freshmen to go to chapel in their stead (a camera in the ceiling records who is sitting in which assigned seat, so as long as a body is in your spot you are absolved) or if they have a card system they do the Slide ‘n Glide, where you scan your student ID at the chapel entrance and promptly bail.

Spirituality of Others

Chapel is also where you assess the spirituality of your fellow students. If you are right with God or would like people to think you are, you will stand while you are singing and sway around and maybe close your eyes and lift up your hands a little bit, especially if your friends are. If you aren’t right with God and feel terrible about it (chronic impatience with your roommate, repeated helpless making out with the guitarist, not having consistent quiet times or not witnessing enough), you’ll sit down and lean forward and radiate humility. Sometimes your friends who know your struggles pat you on the back while they sing or they’ll sit down and put their arms around you (and boy do they look like awesome friends when they do that).

After Praise and Worship

You have either liturgical prayers or Scripture readings, depending on how reformed your school is, and then the Dean of Chapel delivers a message or homily (so named depending again on degree of reformation). It is a rare homily in which sports are not the primary analogical inspiration. Most people nod off or do homework at this point. Guest speakers frequently give the chapel homily. These speakers are usually balding males who are running for some kind of Republican office or assisting someone who is running for Republican office, and the message is on how God is using their campaign to make America godlier. Other times the message is given by students. These messages always feature a slideshow from a recent missions trip and an accompanying tale of the difficulty they had at first to keep the right attitude in the intense heat with no running water, and they always conclude with how much the trip changed them. There aren’t very many female guest speakers at chapel, come to think of it.

Let Everyone Know

Time passes quicker if you can manage some light petting, as James Dobson calls it. Whenever you are in a university chapel you are surrounded by couples with perfect clothes and hair snuggling and holding hands and rubbing each other’s backs and playing with each other’s hair. Then there’s always a mad rush to get to class once the service is over. If you went to the trouble of going to chapel you would like for everyone to know it, so while waiting for class to start you will discuss the chapel speaker with what you hope is intensity and dissect the theology in the message while using as many big words as possible. You can tell which people didn’t go to chapel that morning because they’re the ones keeping quiet. Also, they’re already seated and they aren’t out of breath.