The Lindsay-Crossman Chapel is celebrating its 150th anniversary on Nov. 17 at 12:00 p.m. at with an event that is open to the public and free of charge. 

CJ Harkness, the director of spiritual life at Baldwin Wallace University, said that the goal of the celeration is to bring a “greater awareness of the building and its availability to the campus community.” 

Harkness hopes to spread the knowledge to the community that, even though the University is no longer institutionally affiliated with any particular church, BW students “have a place on campus where people can come engage in faith practice and grow spiritually.”  

Alongside faith and spirituality, he said that the chapel can also be used as a study space and people can reserve small group meetings there. 

At the celebration, there will be music, an open house and a reception. Harkness said that his staff is also trying to get a group of students from different organizations on campus to come together and sing. 

Harkness will be illustrating the chapel’s history at the celebration, including the truth behind the mysterious changes to the building that were made during World War I.  

“Canopy of Heaven” the artwork on the chapel’s ceiling, was covered during the beginning of the war. Harkness said that the prevailing story is that the ceiling was covered up during that time because of common anti-German sentiments during the war. Harkness believes that there’s long been mystery surrounding the reason why the ceiling was covered, which he plans to go into detail about at the celebration.  

He said that the chapel was originally build as a joint venture between Emmanuel Methodist Church and the then-German Wallace College. All of the services were originally conducted in German to serve the German population in the area. 

Harkness said: “Whether or not it was specifically anti-German sentiment that caused them to cover [the artwork], I’ve got at least one reason to say that I’m not 100% sure.” 

He said that he doesn’t question the existence of those sentiments because there were movements around campus that called out the war atrocities. Alongside the movements, there were also administrators who “were called out for not speaking out strongly enough against war atrocities.” “We have a great, rich legacy on our campus,” Harkness said. “The histories that come out of those legacies are often complicated.” 

He hopes to put a spotlight on some of those complications, and hopes that people become inspired for “how we continue to carry the torch in our era.”