Stanford Memorial Church

Early history Stanford Memorial Church is located at the center of Stanford University, It sits the middle of the long southern range of the school's Main Quad. The church was commissioned by Jane Stanford (1828–1905) as a memorial to her husband, Leland Stanford (1824–93). The Stanfords had intended that a church should become "the centerpiece of the university complex". They were deeply religious, and for their day and social standing, "open-minded ecumenicalists", Robert C. Gregg, who was chaplain of Memorial Church during the 1980s and 1990s, stated that the Stanfords had two objectives in building the church: to ensure that Stanford students had an opportunity to develop their ethics as well as their studies, and to provide comfort and strength to the community. Leland Stanford died in 1893; legal disputes tied up the Stanford estate and prevented the completion of the university for several years. When the disputes were settled in Jane Stanford's favor, she was finally able to put into motion her wish for a church. In 1890, Jane Stanford visited her friend Maurizio Camerino in Venice, an artist with a reputation for producing high-quality mosaics; she and her husband had met him years earlier during one of their many trips to Europe. Stanford commissioned Camerino and his company, the Antonio Salviati studios, to produce mosaics for the church. Stanford was involved in every part of the church's design and construction. She was determined that the quality of the stonework of Memorial Church should equal the medieval churches she admired in Europe. According to Memorial Church chaplain Robert C. Gregg, "The grandeur of the church, articulated in its details, greatly occupied Jane Stanford—the structure was to be without flaw". Groundbreaking for the church took place in May 1899; construction began in January 1900. Demonstrating Jane Stanford's goal of ecumenicism, Rabbi Jacob Voorsanger of San Francisco's Congregation Emanu-El read the first Bible lesson. The church's pastor, Heber Newton, gave the sermon. A second service was held later that day, and D. Charles Gardner, the chaplain, gave the sermon. Stanford Memorial Church's first christening was held between the two services. in March 1905. Clergy from several religious traditions, including a Rabbi, a Presbyterian minister, a Methodist minister, an Episcopal bishop, and a Baptist minister, officiated at the service. Earthquakes Stanford Memorial Church has suffered two major earthquakes, in 1906 and in 1989. Although extensively damaged, the church was restored after each. The 1906 quake wrecked much of the church, felled the spire, cracked the walls, and "injured beyond repair" the mosaics and Carrara marble statuary in the chancel. The main cause of the severity of the damage was that the church's original construction failed to attach the crossing structure to the surrounding masonry and roof structures. When the earthquake hit the church, the crossing structure moved independently from the rest of the building, gouging gaping holes in the roofs over the east and west transepts, the nave, and chancel. The debris hit and destroyed the marble sculptures of the twelve apostles that decorated the altar. University trustees considered re-building the tower, and even looked at possible designs, but eventually chose not to rebuild it because they could not agree on its design, and chose instead to replace the tower with a domed skylight. The back of the church, with several hundred feet of arcades, was also completely leveled because it too was not joined to the rest of the building. The extent of the damage was such that the church had to be completely rebuilt. The entire church, except for its surviving crossing structure and offices, was dismantled stone by stone, which, along with the windows, were labelled and stored, and were later relaid in their original positions. The building's crossing received a tiled hipped roof and an oculus, which lit the interior of the church, and was added above the renovated dome, which had a frescoed ceiling decorated with bronze designs as opposed to the gold leaf present before the earthquake. The original rose window above the front facade was replaced with one with a simpler arch shape because it was more similar to the style of the rest of the buildings in the Inner Quad. The four mosaic angels in the pendentives, which decorated its high rounded walls directly below the church's dome and served as the setting beds for hundreds of thousands of tesserae, were severely damaged. An eight-foot mosaic section of an angel's left wing in the church's northeast corner fell to the floor. Several stones from the east arch wall fell onto pews in the balcony, and the organ-loft railing collapsed inward. Although the damage was minor, the church remained closed until 1992 while restoration, as well as a bracing project to protect the building from future earthquakes, without changing the building's decorations, was carried out. The university hired a team of contractors, structural engineers, architects, and conservation specialists to develop a renovation plan, which was paid for by a $10 million fundraising drive. Many donations came from undergraduates, and the university's board of trustees approved the plan before its funding was in place because they recognized the church's importance to Stanford. The Victorian chandeliers were repaired and rewired, and the transept balconies, which had been closed for twenty years because they were declared unsafe, were reopened, after the false doors on the south side of each balcony were replaced by emergency exits and connected to existing staircases on the other side of the wall. Influence According to Stanford professor Van Harvey, Stanford "had the reputation of being a completely secular university" before the 1950s, calling the period a "background of aggressive secularism and the almost complete neglect of the academic study of religion". Harvey speculated that if Stanford had established a seminary like other prestigious universities, its religious studies department and the "ethos" of the entire institution would be different. Stanford did not employ a full-time professor in religion until 1951 and did not establish a religious studies department until 1973, later than most other universities in the U.S. Earlier courses in religion were largely offered by the chaplains of Stanford Memorial Church. David Charles Gardner offered a course in Biblical history and literature beginning in 1907, and by 1910, he was teaching New Testament Greek and Bible classes. Gardner's successor, D. Elton Trueblood, whose goal was the establishment of a non-denominational graduate school in religious studies at Stanford, taught classes about the philosophy of religion. In 1941 Trueblood's efforts to expand the study of religion resulted in the creation of a minor in religion, as well as twenty-one courses offered by him and four faculty members. By 1960, the chaplains of Stanford Memorial Church no longer had to run the program, which had expanded to allow students the option of majoring in the study of religion. By the mid-1960s, the religious studies program at Stanford was enjoying "enormous success". In the 1960s, the study of religion at Stanford began to focus more on social and ethical issues like race and the Vietnam War. Leading this focus was Stanford Memorial Church Dean of the Chapel and Professor of Religion B. Davie Napier, who was "a powerful critic of U.S. policy in Vietnam". Its first ceremony was held in 1993, and was officiated by Associate Dean Diana Akiyama. In 2017, a campus organization attempted to have Stanford Memorial Church declared a sanctuary church for the undocumented immigrant student population, but was unsuccessful due to university policies regarding the status of the church as part of the university. Chaplains Stanford Memorial Church, throughout its history, has been served by chaplains who have been influential amongst the Stanford University student body and community at large. R. Heber Newton, "distinguished writer" and former rector at All Souls Church in New York, was handpicked by Jane Stanford to serve as the church's first pastor; he resigned after four months in 1903 "because he disagreed with Mrs. Stanford on some aspects of church management". According to Stanford biographer Robert W. P. Cutler, "Newton's tenure had been a disappointment to Mrs. Stanford". David Charles Gardner, who replaced Newton, served the church from 1902 to his retirement in 1936. Stanford also handpicked Gardner as Newton's assistant because she was impressed with his "parish work" in Palo Alto. called Gardner "a preacher of only indifferent ability", but considered him "a strength to the whole university". Mirrieless considered Gardner the prime mover behind the creation of the Stanford Home for Convalescent Children, established in 1919, which eventually became the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital. D. Elton Trueblood, a lifelong Quaker, was the church's chaplain from 1936 to 1946. He wrote 33 books, including one about Abraham Lincoln. Trueblood and his wife hosted monthly Friends meetings in their home, and met weekly with Orthodox Jewish students in the vestry of Stanford Memorial Church. George J. Hall was the church's chaplain from 1946 to 1947, followed by Paul C. Johnson, who served between 1949 and 1950. Robert M. Minto was chaplain twice, in 1947–1948, and again from 1950 to 1973. Stanford's next two chaplains, B. Davie Napier (Dean of the chapel, 1966–72) Napier was a "charismatic biblical scholar  ... [and] a powerful critic of U.S. policy in Vietnam". He also protested U.S. involvement in Vietnam and taught religion and ethics in relation to contemporary life and literature. Thomas Ambrogi was acting dean for "a challenging year" in 1986. Robert C. Gregg (1987–98) was born in Texas and ordained as an Episcopal priest. He was also professor of religious studies (now emeritus). Kelly Denton-Borhaug (1999–2000), a Lutheran minister, came to Stanford in 1996 as an associate dean. The Rev. Scotty McLennan (2001–2014), a Unitarian Universalist minister, was "an activist neighborhood lawyer" in Boston before becoming a university chaplain, first at Tufts University. Staff Stanford Memorial Church is run by the Stanford Office for Religious Life, headed by the current Dean for Religious Life, Tiffany Steinwert. She replaced the Very Rev. Prof. Jane Shaw who was the dean for 4 years, 2014–18. Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann serves as Senior Associate Dean. Stanford has two associate deans: the Rev. Joanne Sanders and Sughra Ahmed. Rabbi Karlin-Neumann is Stanford's first associate dean from outside the Christian tradition. Before coming to Stanford, Karlin-Neumann had been a Hillel director and chaplain at UCLA, the Claremont Colleges, and Princeton, and was a rabbi in Alameda, California. She has taught courses in Jewish feminism, rabbinical ethics, education, and social justice. The university changed the title of her position to accommodate a Jewish rabbi, from "Associate Dean of Memorial Church" to "Associate Dean of Religious Life at Stanford". She calls her title at Stanford "Mem Chu and a Jew, too". Muslim dean Sughra Ahmed was appointed in 2017, for the purpose of, as Provost Persis Drell stated, to assist "the Stanford community develop a broader understanding of the Islamic faith, particularly at this time". She was named Muslim Woman of the Year in the United Kingdom in 2014, and is a recognized Muslim leader. ==Murder of Arlis Perry==

Arlis Perry, a 19-year-old who lived on-campus, was murdered there on October 12, 1974. == Architecture ==

Stanford Memorial Church is part of a linked, complex system of arcades that make up the Quad, which serves to unify the entire complex, is more reminiscent of European public spaces than American ones, and "is probably one of the most important feature of the original Stanford architecture". It was built during the American Renaissance period. Stanford historian Richard Joncas called the church "an opulent example of high Victorian architecture with sumptuous materials and arts". Coolidge loosely based his design of Memorial Church on Richardson's design of Trinity Church in Boston. Although the iconography in the church is Christian, Stanford was a "late Victorian progressive", Architectural historian Willis L. Hall claims that there are more depictions of women than in most church imagery at the time. As Barbara Palmer of the Stanford Report stated, Stanford "had her religious beliefs literally carved into the church's sandstone walls". Religion is intended as a comfort, a solace, a necessity to the soul's welfare; and whichever form of religion furnishes the greatest comfort, the greatest solace, it is the form which should be adopted be its name what it will. The best form of religion is trust in God, and a firm belief in the immortality of the soul, life everlasting. Plan The church is a cruciform structure; its original structure, which included a clock and bell tower with an 80-foot (24 m) spire, was long and wide. in the Almaden area of San Jose, was delivered by train and rough-cut in the university Quad. Gregg credits the high quality of the stonework to church and university builder John D. McGilvray. The church is roofed with terracotta tiles of the Italian imbrex and tegula form. The nave, chancel, and transepts appear to project from the square central structure, roofed with tiles and a small skylight above its center. Memorial Church originally had a central bell tower with an 80-foot tall, twelve-sided spire, but this was lost as a result of the 1906 earthquake. The cross was added after the 1906 earthquake; its central shaft was destroyed in the Loma Prieta earthquake and replaced. There are three arched entrances below the exterior mosaic; the central one is slightly larger than the others. In the upper zone of the facade, surrounded by more elaborate stonework and "lacy carving", to Christ, the mosaic's central figure, and includes a landscape with "waving palms and a gleaming sky" and so created a church that is "a dimly lit cavern of glowing mosaic surfaces ... and vibrant, stained-glass windows". There are 29 large carvings of quatrefoils that contain ancient religious symbols in the walls of church's west and east transepts. The stained-glass windows were crafted by J. and R. Lamb of New York. Its exposed-timber ceilings are modeled after Boston's Trinity Church. A Celtic cross adorns the stained glass above the central wooden door that leads into the nave, and Latin epigraphs have been engraved above the two side doors. Above the narthex is an organ gallery. The nave is arcaded and has a single aisle on each side with clerestory windows above. Its walls, from the floor to the top of the clerestory, are decorated with 15 murals made of mosaics on each side, and depicts scenes from the Old Testament. On the spandrels of the pendentives are mosaics of four angels measuring from wing tip to wing tip, rising from clouds. The angels survived the 1906 earthquake, but the angel looking downward was severely damaged during the 1989 earthquake because an 8-foot section of its left wing fell . The chancel, according to Hall, contains "artistic work of a kind seldom seen anywhere". The cross was made by William van Erp and was dedicated to the memory of Jane Stanford in 1948. Behind the altar is a mosaic reproduction of Rosselli's "Last Supper". Around the lower walls of the chancel are twelve niches decorated with golden mosaic tiles. They hold candles, but originally held statues of the twelve apostles, destroyed in 1906 and were never replaced. According to local legend, the cherubim carved in stone above the golden niches and in the pillars' capitals are illustrations of children living on campus at the time of the church's construction. Three stained glass windows in the apse depict the nativity, crucifixion, and ascension of Christ. The mosaics between them show angels, those on the left carrying a cross, those on the right carrying a crown. On the longer sections of the chancel wall, on either side of the windows, are mosaics depicting a choir of angels. Above them is a tier of mosaics with representations of the prophets and kings of Israel. Other mosaics abound in the transepts, clerestory, and the choir loft at the northern end of the church. A series of mosaics in the upper transepts depict Old Testament figures on the east side and Christian saints on the west side. On Jane Stanford's direction, they alternate male and female. A large double pillar before the entrance of the west transept have inscriptions dedicated to members of the Stanford family. After the 1989 earthquake, a third of the west transept was converted into a small chapel. The altar and chairs in this chapel were designed by Bay Area artist Gail Fredell who decorated the chapel's altar by using Salvatti's original mosaics, which had been stored since the church's reconstruction following the 1906 earthquake. Windows According to architectural historian Willis L. Hall, the church's 20 large stained glass windows "are as much a feature of the church as the mosaics". Jane Stanford hired Lamb because she felt he was more interested in "the ecclesiastical rather than commercial aspect of the work". The installation of the windows at Stanford Memorial Church was the largest commission awarded to an American stained glass artist at the time, and the project is "considered the finest example of Lamb's work". Stanford chose the life of Christ for the windows' theme, inspired by the religious paintings by European master painters such as Frederic Shields and Gustave Doré. The windows have a section at the bottom with the scriptural quotations their images depict; the larger windows also include their titles. which sparkle when light strikes it. The church's clerestory contains many smaller windows of individuals from the Bible or Christian history. The windows in the nave above the east arcade depict the following Old Testament figures: Abraham, Hagar and her child Ishmael, Moses, Pharaoh's Daughter, Joshua, and Deborah. The windows in the east transept depict David, Ruth, Solomon, The Queen of Sheba, Elijah, Esther, Isaiah, Judith, Daniel, and Hannah. In the nave above the west arcade feature saints and virtues: Stephen, Agnes, Peter, Priscilla, John, and Hope. In the west transept are Simeon, Anne, Matthew, Faith, Mark, Charity, Luke, Dorcas, Paul, and Martha. The clerestory above the east and west doors are two windows of angels. Unlike the other windows throughout the church, they do not receive natural light from outside and are artificially illuminated instead. Mosaics contains a copy of Rosselli's "The Last Supper".|alt=A stained glass window shows the crucifixion. On either side mosaics show angels holding symbols of the Passion and Glory of Christ. Beneath is a mosaic depicting Christ and His apostles celebrating the Passover. The mosaics that decorate Stanford Memorial Church, which Taylor considers "a perfect complement to Frederick Lamb's stained-glass windows", are "virtually everywhere" inside the church. of extensively decorating Memorial Church's interior and facade, similar in style to the mosaics in many of the churches she and her husband admired during their travels in Europe. One of the reasons she chose mosaics was because of the similar weather in Italy and Northern California, where the moderate climates and rainy seasons in both settings protect the images from erosion and clear the pollution that accumulates on many buildings in large cities. As Hall states, the "mosaics on the facade are always clear and brilliant." During the Stanfords' 1883 tour of Europe, they visited Byzantine churches in Constantinople and St Mark's Basilica in Venice. They met and befriended Maurizio Camerino, the manager of the Antonio Salviati studios, which had just completed restoring the mosaics at St Mark's. Camerino's firm worked exclusively on the Stanford mosaics for three years; the project, which included the mosaics created for the university museum, was the largest mosaic project in the U.S. at the time. Paoletti's watercolors were divided into two-foot-square sections, which were made into glass by other artists in Venice. The mosaics were then shipped in pieces by boat to New York and then by railroad to California, where they were placed on the church's walls. The mosaic adorning the church's chancel is a reproduction of Rosselli's fresco of the Last Supper from the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. Camerino obtained permission from Pope Leo XIII to reproduce it at Stanford Memorial Church. There are 12 mosaics in each transept balcony that are split into two sets of six, creating an arc of six mosaics, ten windows, and six mosaics. Most of the church's mosaics were made from 1/8-inch tiles; larger 3/4-inch tiles were used on the higher mosaics, and smaller 1/4-inch tiles were used in "The Last Supper" mosaic. The Murray Harris plays music from the Romantic period; its sound has been described as "romantic [and] undulating" and "like a low-decibel airplane engine revving up" The Fisk-Nanney organ, which many consider one of the best organs in the world, was built in 1985 and is also housed in the church's upstairs gallery. It is named after its builder, Charles Brenton Fisk, and for Herbert Nanney, who was the church's organist for 39 years. Although it was commissioned in 1973, its completion was delayed for many years, due to logistical, financial, and construction issues. The organ's case is made of poplar wood and its almost 4,500 pipes are made of varying sizes of lead and tin. Its keyboards, which Morgan calls the "flight deck," are made with grenadilla, with rosewood making up its natural and sharps, and are capped with bone. The organ's keyboards are black on white, instead of the modern white on black. The stop controls create "a huge array of sounds". plays Bach's Fantasia and Fugue in G minor on the church's Fisk-Nanney. The Fisk-Nanney is a four-manual Baroque-type organ with 73 ranks. It uses a "combination of elements from historic East German, North German, and French organs plus dual temperaments", and is "the first instrument in the history of organ building that is capable of reproducing nearly all organ music written from the 16th through the 18th centuries". The organ, which "has remarkable complexity", features both French- and German-style reeds and principal choruses. It is equipped with a Brustpositiv division in meantone temperament. A lever allows the remaining divisions to alternate between well temperament and meantone temperament, a feature made possible by the inclusion of five extra pipes (two for each sharp key) per octave. Morgan describes the organ's sound as "delicious" and "visceral", ringing with "'incredible clarity' and 'dark color'", and compares it to driving a Maserati. He insists that the best place to listen to the Fisk-Nanny is not upstairs in the gallery where it sits, but in the church, "about halfway down the nave". In 2005 Morgan performed the complete organ works of Dieterich Buxtehude during a series of recitals, eight hours in all, to celebrate the organ's 20th anniversary. During the 2009–2010 school year, Morgan commemorated the 25th anniversary of the Fisk-Nanney organ and his 10th year at Stanford in a concert series of the complete organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach, which took 18 hours to complete. Memorial Church's third organ, the Katherine Potter-Brinegar organ, was built in 1995 and was named for the spouse of Stanford alumni Claude S. Brinegar. It "further enhances" the diversity of the organs in Stanford Memorial Church, and was inspired by a famous chamber organ designed by German organ maker Esias Compenius in 1610. It is self-contained, with its blower and bellows encased in its walnut case, and has hidden, retractable wheels that allow it to moved anywhere in the church. It is a single-manual organ; most of its pipework is made of different types of wood, and has 8 speaking stops, 3 of which are made of reed pipes. Its sound has been described as "relaxed and refined to the listener". The continuo organ built by Martin Pasi of Roy, Washington was acquired in June 2001. It contains three stops. The case and most of its pipes are made of walnut, and its keys are made of ebony and English boxwood. In 2010 the church received on long-term loan a five-rank Tudor-style organ built by Hupalo & Repasky Pipe Organs. It is a recreation based upon the work of English organ builders and restorers Martin Goetze and Dominic Gwynn and of the discovery in 1995 of the upper boards, grid, and table of a rare English organ, one of only three out of the five organs of the type in existence. It is a "small but tonally versatile" organ typical of the Tudor era of the 16th century. The Tudor organ's 200 pipes are made from metals with high tin content, and its façade pipes have been gilded and embossed. Its case, which was inspired by organ cases in churches in Wales and Stanford-on-Avon, is made of stained white oak, with hand-carved panels of linen fold and Tudor rose (inspired by the Tudor rose on Shrewsbury Tower at St. John's College in Cambridge) carvings. The Tudor's keys are made of European pear wood; its sharps are made of ebony. It has two large feeder bellows that supply the organ's wind. The organ's sound is "surprisingly full and has a singing bell-like quality". == Services and facilities ==

churches on the West Coast of the United States. Memorial services, conducted by Stanford's dean and other chaplain officials, for students, alumni, faculty, and staff are also conducted at the church. Members of the university community use Memorial Church for "quiet, for reflection, and for private devotions". == See also ==