Church Center for the United Nations

The plan for the Church Center was first unveiled in November 1961 by the Methodist Church. Construction began in the summer of 1962. The building is located on the southwest corner of United Nations Plaza – a local bypass of First Avenue – and 44th Street. The paired stained glass interior and exterior sculpture on the street-facing wall were created by Henry Lee Willet and Benoît Gilsoul, respectively, with both working for Willet Hauser Architectural Glass. The name of this large work is "Man's Search for Peace" and it shows human-like shapes around a large eye-like form. The building was dedicated in September 1963, with UN Secretary General U Thant, US Ambassador to the UN Adlai E. Stevenson, and US Secretary of State Dean Rusk all speaking at the ceremony. In addition to the Methodists, representatives from the Roman Catholic and Jewish faiths were also part of the dedication. Some two thousand attendees heard U Thant praise both the UN and the church for the "act of faith" that led to its construction, while Rusk talked about how the dangers from the ongoing Cold War were ever-present. ==Goals==

From the beginning, the church center was considered interdenominational in spirit and purpose, Subsequently, it was run by the Methodist Church itself, The different parts of the church involved in it became complicated, so to simplify it came to be that it was owned and operated solely by the United Methodist Women organization. In any case, as one United Methodist Women official said in 2013, "From its inception, the Church Center for the U.N. was envisioned as more than a site for the Methodist Church's international work. It was to provide access to the U.N. to other faith communities and nongovernmental organizations working for human rights, development and peace." One of the goals of the center was to give both people of both lay and clergy vocations an immediate understanding of what went on at the United Nations. To the end, conference rooms in the center have had a loudspeaker set-up wherein debates from the United Nations could be piped into them. The church center has hosted people pleading causes at the United Nations, such as East Timorese independence activist José Ramos-Horta. It is also the location where most of the nongovernmental meetings in conjunction with the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women are held. Nonetheless, as the New York Times has written, "the affiliation between [the center] and the United Nations is more spiritual than official." ==Events and uses==

The Chapel is well known for being the site of marriage ceremonies, and especially for couples of different religious backgrounds and faiths. Its use for interfaith ceremonies was mentioned in a 1985 Dear Abby column. It has been listed for this purpose on the website of the Office of the Mayor of New York City. The church center charges a rental fee for use of the chapel for weddings. Receptions following the ceremony are sometimes held at the United Nations Plaza Hotel, located on the other side of 44th Street. Other ceremonies also take place in the chapel. The memorial service for prominent black academic Z. K. Matthews from South Africa was held at the Church Center in 1968. A memorial service by the Japanese delegation to the United Nations was held at the chapel for American inventor William S. Halstead in 1987. In addition, a variety of politically oriented events and conferences have taken place at the center. In 1965, the origins of an organization known as Clergy and Laymen Concerned About Vietnam (CALCAV), which involved Jesuit priest and anti-war activist Daniel Berrigan along with the Reverend Richard John Neuhaus and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, came from an anti-war rally at the church center. The Global Peace Service Conference was held at the Church Center in 1993. Some events held there have been controversial, such as a hosting a panel discussion on religion with President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2007, in which representatives of some religious groups refused to participate while others thought it important to engage. A livestream of the play Sliver of a Full Moon, a staged reading by survivors of domestic abuse on Native American tribal lands, was performed at the Chapel in 2014. The church center has often been the site where announcements are made about the winner of the annual Templeton Prize for progress in thought about religion. ==See also==