In 1932, more than 1200 members of the Harvard community filled Harvard Yard for the dedication of Memorial Church. Built to commemorate Harvard's 373 war dead, the church was to serve as a religious nexus for the largely Protestant University.

From the outset, the church was a controversial project, however. Many alumni felt a war memorial shouldn't be utilitarian in purpose.

And the Crimson and the New York Times both said that it was not appropriate to remember people of all faiths with a Protestant church.

Today, Memorial Church administrators are grappling with some of the same concerns their predecessors faced sixty-two years ago. The church must accommodate students with vastly different religious beliefs and practices.

Muslim and Jewish students, not just Protestants, use church facilities. And while a few say the church's Protestant denomination reminds them of a less inclusive Harvard of the past, most say the church does not make them feel excluded.

Early Turmoil

When discussion of a memorial to Harvard's war dead first surfaced in 1919, the religious needs of the University were being satisfied by Appleton Chapel, a small building on the present Mem Church site.

So the committee assigned by the Associated Harvard Clubs to determine the most fitting way to commemorate this sacrifice didn't immediately consider a new chapel.

Debate over the form of the proposed memorial was heated from the start. According to the Harvard Alumni Bulletin, the committee soon found the strong sentiment against a utilitarian memorial.

Alumnus Owen Wister, Class of 1882, proposed building a memorial statue near Appleton Chapel, and devoting "the hundreds of thousands of dollars left over to traveling scholarships."

A New York Times editorial from 1921 suggested a memorial quadrangle, "a group of dormitories, [that] ought to satisfy both the utilitarians and the servere esthetes."

But President A. Lawrence Lowell is credited with first suggesting a new chapel, calling it "the best monument that we can build to these our heroes."

He envisioned the new chapel on the site of the old one, and wanted it to fulfill three goals.

"It shall be a memorial," Lowell wrote in the Harvard Alumni Bulletin. "It shall meet the daily needs of the University, and it shall be adequate to receive the large attendance of Sunday services."

Criticism persisted, however, over the religious nature of the monument.

In 1921, the New York Times declared that "a memorial to men of different sects shouldn't be religious."