On Oct. 4, the Episcopal Chaplaincy at Harvard will hold the official consecration of a tent constructed for outdoor and mobile worship.
Chaplain Rita Powell and Bishop Alan Gates will lead a socially distanced liturgy in the Chaplaincy’s backyard at 2 Garden St., weaving Christian tradition with the “invitation to question inherited religious norms.” Powell describes the tent as, “a structure ... which can point us both inward, to the sacred body each of us carries, the sacred body of the gathered ones and outward, to the world itself as the dwelling of God.”
Powell began to conceptualize the tent in fall 2019 as a way to “challenge churchgoers’ expectations of where they can encounter the divine.” A recent survey by the Harvard Crimson found that only 17% of incoming freshmen identified as Protestant in 2019, compared to 20% in 2017. It is the hope of ECH that the tent will offer an alternative for students who are “seeking meaning or connection to Christianity but feel alienated by traditional church settings.”