Creeds unite in support of Wichita State’s Grace Chapel

In her 44 years of teaching anthropology at Wichita State University, Dorothy Billings said she saw “friends married and buried” from Grace Memorial Chapel.

She remembered one 6 a.m. Sunday ceremony during the Cold War era, which she recorded on a 3/4-inch videotape:

“The sun was coming up, we had a music professor playing Beethoven and a bunch of leftover hippies crawling up the aisle with pots and pans,” she said. “That was religion, and I hope we have small things like that here, too.”

Billings was one of about 40 people who attended a prayer service at the chapel Friday evening, held in response to the national backlash WSU has received since removing the chapel’s pews in May.

WSU’s student body president Joseph Shepard hosted the service, which was attended more by alumni and people from the community than by current students.

Shepard has been an outspoken supporter of the changes, which were intended to make the chapel more inclusive to people of all faiths. As a consequence, Shepard and the student body vice president, Khondoker Usama, who is Muslim, have received numerous hate messages and threats.

“I received a 47-page-long hate e-mail on Friday,” Usama said. “For God’s sake, we made it to be the top trending university last Friday on Facebook. What on Earth would make us like that, other than basketball? That was disheartening for all of us – we thought this thing was just the surrounding community.”

A captain with the Wichita State University Police Department in plainclothes sat in the back of the chapel throughout the service, surveying the scene. He was armed. Two police officers in uniform made regular rounds around the chapel’s exterior as well.

Usama requested the extra security for the event, because he had heard rumors on social media that people were planning to “cause trouble.”

In remarks before the service, Shepard said various faith groups around campus declined his invitation to attend the service on Friday because they were afraid.

“Students and student leaders should never be attacked for practicing their religious beliefs in a space that was created to be inclusive for all,” Shepard said.

Djuan Wash, communications director for Sunflower Community Action, said the controversy surrounding the chapel is disheartening.

“We’re trying to be as progressive as possible, and for people to be so intolerant towards people who are different is sad,” he said. “I just hope that we can sometime or someday move beyond all this rhetoric, the fear-mongering.”

People representing different creeds and groups – pagans, atheists, Presbyterians, the Kansas Legislature – came forward during the service and expressed gratitude to Shepard.

“Those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it,” Shepard said. “I don’t want my nephew to come to Wichita State in 15 years and have to relive this same issue, so I’m going to make sure I fix this history right now while I still have the opportunity.”

This story was originally published October 16, 2015 at 9:31 PM with the headline "Creeds unite in support of Wichita State’s Grace Chapel."