When you stop to think about it, there is something sort of strange about the multi-faith chapels, buildings, and prayer rooms that form a familiar part of our contemporary institutional landscape. We find them in airports, hospitals, prisons, shopping malls, entertainment complexes, and universities. They include soaring architectural landmarks and simple rooms where design seems to be an afterthought at best. Unlike chapels, churches, synagogues, and mosques—all of which are designed for particular ritual activities and draw on or speak to specific theologies and religious histories—multi-faith spaces must make it possible for individuals or groups with diverse theologies, rituals, and symbols to pray. So, why does this not seem like an impossible task? Or rather, why does it appear to be a necessary one?
Courtney Bender
Courtney Bender (B.A. Swarthmore College; Ph.D. Princeton University) is Professor of Religion at Columbia University. Professor Bender's research focuses on the social and cultural processes that shape religious practice, experience and interaction in contemporary American life. She is the author of "Heaven's Kitchen: Living Religion at God's Love We Deliver" (University of Chicago Press 2003), "The New Metaphysicals: Spirituality and the American Religious Imagination" (University of Chicago Press 2010) and the co-editor of several volumes, including with Pamela Klassen "After Pluralism: Reimagining Models of Interreligious Engagement" (Columbia University Press 2010) and with Ann Taves, "What Matters? Ethnographies of Value in a Not So Secular Age." Her current research focuses (historically) on multiple parties involved in the development of New York's modern art museums—or as many put it, "secular temples"—and (ethnographically) the messy and hiccupping articulation of modern aesthetic actors that take shape within them. She tweets at @achtungbender.
Posts by Courtney Bender
August 4, 2014
Airport Multi-faith Prayer Rooms
Location: various
Built: various
Firm(s): various
URL: http://www.heathrowairport.com/heathrow-airport-guide/services-and-facilities/worship; http://www.airportchapel.org/
Academic paper(s): Kraftl, Peter, and Peter Adey. “Architecture/affect/inhabitation: geographies of being-in buildings.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 98.1 (2008): 213-231
Crompton, Andrew. “The architecture of multifaith spaces: God leaves the building.” The Journal of Architecture 18.4 (2013): 474-496
De Botton, Alain. A week at the airport: A Heathrow diary. Profile Books, 2009
August 4, 2014
Rothko Chapel
Location: Houston, Texas
Built: 1971
Firm(s): Philip Johnson, Howard Barnstone, Eugene Aubry and Mark Rothko
URL: http://www.rothkochapel.org/index.php; http://www.archdaily.com/160388/ad-classics-rothko-chapel-philip-johnson-howard-barnstone-eugene-aubry-and-mark-rothko/
Academic Paper(s): Barnes, Susan J., John de Menil, and Dominique de Menil. The Rothko Chapel: An Act of Faith. Rothko Chapel, 1989
De Menil, Dominique, and Frances Carter Stephens. The Rothko Chapel: Writings on Art and the Threshold of the Divine. Eds. Polly Koch, and Diane Planer Lovejoy. Rothko Chapel, 2010
August 4, 2014
University of Toronto Multi-faith Centre
Location: Toronto, Canada
Built: 2006-2007
Firm(s): Moriyama and Teshima
URL: https://www.multifaith.utoronto.ca/
Academic Paper(s): none
August 4, 2014
United States Air Force Cadet Academy Chapel
Location: Colorado Springs, Colorado
Built: 1962
Firm(s): Skidmore, Owings and Merrill
URL: http://www.usafa.edu/hc/fc.cfm; http://www.roundus.com/listing/659/#1
Academic Paper(s): Olson, Sheri. “Lauded and Maligned: The Cadet Chapel” in Robert Bruegemann, ed. Modernism at Mid-Century: The Architecture of the United States Air Force Academy. Chicago: University of Chicago press, 1994
Hutchison, William R. Religious pluralism in America: The contentious history of a founding ideal. Yale University Press, 2003
Cook, Heather. “Service before Self-Evangelicals Flying High at the US Air Force Academy.” JL & Educ. 36 (2007): 1
August 4, 2014
The O2 Millennium Dome Exhibition (2000) and Prayer Spaces
Location: Greenwich, England
Built: 1999-2000
Firm(s): Rogers Stirk Harbour and Partners; Jasper Jacob Associates; Eva Jricna
URL: http://www.greenwich-peninsula-chaplaincy.org.uk/prayerspace.html
Academic paper(s): Gilliat-Ray, Sophie. “From ‘chapel’ to ‘prayer room’: The production, use, and politics of sacred space in public institutions.” Culture and Religion 6, no. 2 (2005): 287-308
Gilliat‐Ray, Sophie. “The trouble with ‘inclusion’: a case study of the faith zone at the Millennium Dome.” The Sociological Review 52, no. 4 (2004): 459-477
August 4, 2014
Temple of Religion, New York World's Fair (1939-1940)
Location: Flushing, New York
Built: 1939 (Demolished 1940)
Firm(s): Stein, Poor and Reagan
Academic paper(s): Todd, J. Terry. “The Temple of Religion and the Politics of Religious Pluralism: Judeo-Christian America at the 1939–1940 New York World’s Fair,” in After Pluralism: Reimagining Models of Religious Engagement. Courtney Bender and Pamela Klassen, eds. New York: Columbia University Press, 2010
August 4, 2014
Abraham Centre/Parroquia Patriarcha Abraham
Location: Barcelona, Spain
Built: 1991-1992
Firm(s): Josep Benedito i Rovira
Academic paper(s): Francisco Díez de Velasco. “Los Espcaios Multiconfesionales en Centros Públicos en España: Ensayo de Tipología” (Essay on a typology of multi-faith spaces in public centres in Spain). Bandue 6 (2012): 63-109
August 4, 2014
Bet- und Lehrhaus (The House of Prayer and Learning)
Location: Berlin, Germany
Built: Not yet built
Firm(s): Kuehn Malvezzi
URL: http://house-of-one.org/en
Academic paper(s): The House of Prayer and Learning, Berlin: Designs for the Sacred Building of Tomorrow Berlin: Dom Publishing (2013)
August 4, 2014
Graterford Prison Chapel, Pennsylvania Department of Corrections
Location: Graterford, Pennsylvania
Built: 1931
Firm(s): Unknown
URL: http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/department_of_corrections/4604
Academic Book(s): Joshua Dubler, Down in the Chapel: Religious Life in an American Prison. Macmillan, 2013
August 4, 2014
Idlewild/John F. Kennedy International Airport "Tri-Faith Plaza"
Location: Jamaica, New York
Built: 1966 (Demolished 1989)
Firm(s): Bloch and Hesse (Jewish); Edgar J. Tafel (Protestant); George J. Sole (Catholic)
URL: http://www.jfkchapel.org/; www.christfortheworldchapel.org/; http://www.jfkshul.com/history.html
Academic paper(s): Stoff, Joshua. John F. Kennedy International Airport. Arcadia Publishing, 2009
Eggebeen, Janna. Airport Age: Architecture and Modernity in America. ProQuest, 2007
August 4, 2014
Hospital Multi-faith Chapels and Prayer Rooms
Location: various
Built: various
Firm(s): various
Academic Book(s): Cadge, Wendy. Paging God: Religion in the halls of medicine. University of Chicago Press, 2013
August 4, 2014
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Kresge Chapel
Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts
Built: 1953-1955
Firm(s): Eero Saarinen and Associates
URL: http://studentlife.mit.edu/news/religious%20life; http://mitchaplain.blogspot.com/
Academic paper(s): Foxe, David M. “Saarinen’s Shell Game: Tensions, Structures, and Sounds at MIT.” Recalling Eero Saarinen 1910–2010
Birkhäuser Basel, 2010. 191-211; Grubiak, Margaret M. “Educating the Moral Scientist-the chapels at IIT and MIT.” ARRIS The Journal of the Southeast Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians 18 (2007): 1-14
August 4, 2014
The New Texts of Multi-faith Architechture
As many entries in this portal suggest, multi-faith prayer rooms are not merely viewed as a “good idea” or an aspiration for a heterogeneous and plural society, but are in many cases demanded of public institutions. Some, including prisons, face mandates to accommodate diverse religious practice. In other settings, including international airports, setting aside a place for prayer has become so broadly viewed as a normal or conventional service or public utility that not providing some kind of space comes to seem almost unthinkable.
February 27, 2013
What Can the Study of Prayer Tell Us?
What can the study of prayer tell us – about social life, religious institutions and practices, shared and unique concepts of communication, and ethical self-formation? New Directions in the Study of Prayer supports research that seeks to better understand prayer, in its many forms, but that also considers how the varied practices (from the textual to the embodied) associated with prayer may influence broader questions about social and human concerns.