Broader Connections

This exhibit was created to document the Outdoor Memorial Chapel at The Thacher School for Anthropology of Religion at Pomona College. One of the focuses of this course is on how religion and violence are related. This memorial chapel certainly connects the two spatially, by having the chapel adjacent to a war memorial. Yet the memorial chapel is somewhat ambiguous in how it asks us to think about violence: although it commemorates those who have been victim to the violence of war, it also commemorates those who have participated in that violence. It neither celebrates nor condemns the wars that caused the deaths of these alumni, but rather gives us a space to reflect on its meaning.

For a very different type of memorial, another exhibit on this site explores the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust in more depth. This type of memorial connects religion and violence entirely differently, mourning the victims of the Holocaust and condemning the violence against a religion that caused it.

Furthermore, when it comes to religion, the Outdoor Memorial Chapel doesn't seem particularly religious. Rather, it doesn't draw strongly on other traditional religions but appeals more to an aesthetic that could be considered the "religion" of Thacher. As Geertz says,  religion is "(1) a system of symbols (2) which acts to establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations in men (3) by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (4) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that (5) the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic." The culture that Thacher cultivates seems to satisfy these criteria. The core principles of the school, Honor, Fairness, Kindness, and Truth, are ingrained into students in a way that stays with them throughout their lives, and are reinforced in many ways throughout a student's time at the school. In this way, ceremonies like Senior Vespers serve to reinforce the community built around the celebration of Thacher, making the Outdoor Memorial Chapel a place where religion truly is practiced.