To what extent do religious services figure in this work? Worship has always played an important part in the life of human beings. Whether man is in Babylonia worshipping the stars, or in Egypt at the Isis-Osiris shrine, or whether he ascends Mount Olympus with Homer, he is a worshipper. He may ascend to the indescribable, unthinkable realms with Plotinus or he may with twentieth century enlightenment claim allegiance to the God designated Father of all. Yet he worships. It will prove interesting to note the stimulation of this instinct under the supervision of the Negro colleges and universities.
The chapel services claim our attention first because it was unanimously denoted in the questionnaires as one of the services which these institutions emphasize in the life of the students; many of them point out its significance even for the teachers. Every one of these institutions require daily chapel attendance at a service, which lasts on the average one-half hour among the thirty-eight institutions investigated. In nine-tenths of the announcements or bulletins sent from these institutions to prospective students, the chapel attendance is emphasized as one of the rigid requirements of the institutions. In four-fifths of these same institutions, chapel attendance is recorded by some member of the faculty or some one deputized by the authority vested with that right.
What value is the chapel service to the religious development? This cannot be answered indiscriminately. The answer depends upon the chapel activities. One should ask what happens at the chapel service. One student answered that question thus: "The chapel is the place where the president gets us all together to give us all a general 'cussing out' instead of taking us one by one." This expresses the sentiment of several hundred students in those colleges included in our study. During this investigation I visited and had reports from 21 chapel services. Out of the 21 investigated, 19 were exhibits of the opportune reprimand, with the president or his vice-president or the dean performing the task effectively. But it would be a gross injustice even to the twenty-one institutions referred to, if we should leave the impression that the sum total of chapel services is described in the remarks relative to reprimands. A professor of one of the leading Negro colleges, in defending the chapel service, said the "calling down" is merely the introduction and conclusion of the chapel exercises to give opportunity for ex-officio display.