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That old-time religion

Pop quiz, hotshot. What is Deism?

a)The study of Billy Dee Williams and his legacy of phenomenal film acting (read: Lando Calrissian in "Star Wars")

b) An Enlightenment-era doctrine which holds that while God created the universe, He allows it to run by natural laws and generally keeps His distance

c) Both A and B

d) Your mom

If you answered "A," you're my new favorite person. You should come over some time so we can talk about how great a character Lando is. Freezing Han in carbonite -- the tragedy of it all.

If you answered "B," however, you're both smarter than those who answered "A" and, as it turns out, correct. Deism is also the religious doctrine that our founder, Mr. Jefferson (or, as I like to call him, TJ Jeffy Jeff) appears to have adopted. For Jefferson, Deism just made sense: It seemed to reconcile the tension between a life based on reason and belief in the existence of a higher power -- a delicate balance, to be sure, but one that Jefferson, along with countless other Enlightenment thinkers, was happy to maintain.

Why all this talk of Deism (or Billy Dee Williams-ism, for that matter)? You may have noticed the large, round building at the north end of the Lawn. The Rotunda is many things, round being just one of them; one of the things that it's not, however, is a church -- a very controversial move on Jefferson's part in the early 19th century when having a church as the central building of a college was architectural orthodoxy.

Why no church on Central Grounds (that is, before the chapel was built in the late 1800s)? Jefferson was a steadfast believer in the separation of church and state -- religion, in his view, was an important but fundamentally private matter. Therefore, he thought it best to have a "temple of knowledge" as the central focus of the Academical Village. That the Rotunda housed the University's library, rather than a sacred space, is oozing with Enlightenment symbolism.

In other news, if you haven't seen "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze," you're missing out on some truly spectacular cinema.

This is not to say that Jefferson envisioned a University completely devoid of all religion. He personally authorized students to hold religious services in the Rotunda and suggested that the University's professor of moral philosophy include Jesus in his curriculum.

This wasn't enough, however, for many Jefferson critics in the 19th century, who viewed the Lawn as a kind of secularized netherworld from which religion was unfairly ostracized.

People got uppity about it, too. After five students died from typhoid in 1829, Episcopal Bishop William Meade told students in a memorial sermon on Grounds that God was angry at the Rotunda and was punishing Jefferson's university for "its disguised atheism."

In the words of Morgan Freeman, "I'm not one for blaspheming -- but that one made me laugh."

Religion continued to be a controversial topic on Grounds for much of the century. An official chaplaincy was established in 1932 that rotated annually among the Baptist, Episcopal, Methodist and Presbyterian denominations. The University also can boast that the very first American chapter of the YMCA was chartered here in 1858.

The lack of a central religious building, however, ensured that the controversy over religion continued. There were several plans over the course of the 19th century to build a chapel at the south end of the Lawn where Old Cabell Hall stands today. Proponents of a chapel on the Lawn came very close to achieving their goal in the 1850s. As University Prof. Richard Guy Wilson has noted in his writings on the Lawn, were it not for a pesky little thing called the Civil War, there may very well have been a chapel directly across from the Rotunda.

Civil war, you see, has a way of showing up at the most inconvenient times.

In 1885, proponents of a University chapel rallied enough financial support to make their vision a reality, although the Board of Visitors decided that a location northeast of the Rotunda, rather than directly across from it on the Lawn, would be best.

Interestingly, if you're thinking about getting married in the University chapel, you had to make your reservations in about 1885.

So there it is: After 60 years, advocates of religion on Grounds had a chapel to call their own -- and now that chapel plays the strangest songs I've ever heard right around 4:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. I'm pretty sure the chapel bells were playing "Edelweiss" the other day.

Start playing other songs from "The Sound of Music," and I'll be impressed. I think Grounds could use a few of my favorite things.

Daniel's column runs biweekly on Wednesdays. He can be reached at danyoung@cavalierdaily.com.

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