Written by Jacob Branson

For as long as students have attended chapel at Harding, so too have they complained about it. Various aspects of the service have irked students, such as its early timeslot, the presence or lack of sheet music on screen, the assigned or unassigned seating, etc. Despite the University’s best efforts to fix chapel — including and especially the “I am the problem with chapel” skit — none of them have been entirely successful. I propose that the University has failed to recognize the problem with chapel is determined not just by the details of what occurs during the service, but is primarily inherent to the service itself.

Harding claims that the purpose of chapel is to provide a time of worship, and therein lies the problem. Mandatory worship, by its very nature, can never be worship. In reference to the prophet Isaiah, Jesus casts judgment on false worshippers in Matthew 18:8-9, claiming “these people come near to me with their mouth / and honor me with their lips / but their hearts are far from me / They worship me in vain / their teachings are merely human rules.”

With these words, Jesus demonstrates the most fundamental aspect of worship is the trueness of one’s heart.

How then, can one’s heart be true without choice? If an individual does good simply because it is required, then can that action sincerely be attributed to them as righteousness? When worship becomes mandatory, the opportunity for true worship — voluntary worship — disappears. When I worship God of my own choosing, I know my heart’s intent is true. However, when I worship God at 9 a.m. in the Benson every morning, is my intent true, or am I only there because of “human rules?”

More than this, the University has a detrimentally narrow-minded view of what it means to worship God. In making chapel mandatory for all students, we are consequently forced to exist within these narrow boundaries, rather than having the freedom to worship God of our own volition in our own manner of preference. While I recognize Harding is a Church of Christ institution and respect its desire to maintain those roots, there are a vast number of students who are unfamiliar with its traditions, and the University does nothing to justify their existence.

These traditions dictate that the only form of worship to occur during chapel is singing, but is not worship more than just words in a songbook? If Jesus himself says it is not enough merely to honor him with our lips, then why should we suffice to make our creator settle for anything less than everything we have? Furthermore, why should the University strip its students of our right to worship God with everything we have? By making chapel not only mandatory, but extremely limited in its scope and understanding of what it means to worship God, the University is not encouraging worship — it is actively preventing worship.

Given the immense popularity of Sunday church services, Downtown Church of Christ Singing, Fellowship Bible Church’s Sanctuary, Wednesday devotionals and more, it is evident that Harding’s student body is not at a loss for those seeking to attune their hearts with God in worship, whether they’re required to or not. Why then, does the University insist on forcing all students to “worship” in a vain effort to combat a problem by which it has never been plagued? If I attended a secular school, I could wake up at 9 every morning and worship God how I want to — with the fullness of everything I have and everything I am — a right which mandatory chapel has stolen.