Guiding the repair and the rethinking has been the Program Planning Committee for Phillips Church, whose members include the committee's chair, Peter Greer '58, the Bates-Russell Distinguished Faculty Professor and instructor in English; the Reverend Jamie Hamilton, chair of the religion department; Sam Heath '72, former director of the Lamont Gallery; Steve Kushner, director of studies and instructor in music; Rick Mahoney '61, director of financial aid; Paula Singer, parent of five alumni/ae and an area resident; the Reverend Robert Thompson '72, the school minister; and ex officio members Don Briselden, director of facilities management, and Roger Wakeman, project manager for the renovation.

On the following pages, two members of the committee describe in detail the rebirth of Phillips Church. Peter Greer discusses not only the renovations to the church, but also the thinking behind them, while Jamie Hamilton-who is serving as acting school minister while Reverend Thompson is on sabbatical-explains what those physical changes mean for spiritual life at the Academy. -Editor

A Building Reborn
By Peter Greer '58; '81(Hon.)

In 1744, certain disgruntled parishioners of Exeter's Protestant Congregational Church separated from what came to be called the First Church. Referring to themselves as the New Parish, these parishioners built a series of wooden meeting houses in which they worshiped. But by 1896, these wooden structures had proved inadequate, and the parish (now called the Second Church) and its parishioners created a plan calling for a new church building that would be a "stately Gothic edifice of granite," to be built on land donated by the trustees of Phillips Exeter Academy.

Phillips Church is a spiritual home for the Academy community, including (top to bottom) seniors Angel Desai and A.J. Kumar, members of the Hindu Society; students attending the Thursday Morning Meditation service; staff member Tim Olsen and his wife, Marianne, whose youngest daughter was baptized by the Reverend Bob Thompson '72 this winter; and senior Walker Brumskine, a church proctor.

On September 30, 1899, the completed building was dedicated as The Phillips Church. Circumstantial change caused the parishioners of the Second Church, in 1916, to leave Phillips Church and rejoin the First Church, thereby giving the Academy the chance to rent the building for its own religious program. In 1922, the Academy bought the building, and Phillips Church became officially what it had been called unofficially for some years: The School Church.

The Meaning of Religion

Some 100 years later, in the mid-1990s, it became clear that Phillips Church was in need of significant repair. By Academy policy, any major campus construction must be preceded by a statement that articulates the program served by that construction; to that end, in the summer of 1998, Principal Ty Tingley formed the Program Planning Committee for Phillips Church and charged it with articulating the program of the school's ministry.

The makeup of the committee was, in and of itself, a statement about the charge: We were conspicuously heterogeneous, coming from various areas of the Academy community and out of various faith traditions. Our personal religious beliefs ran the gamut from deep faith to deep skepticism. After some reflection and consultation with the principal, we determined that our charge was a broad one: We were to think of Phillips Church as an institution rather than as simply an edifice, and we were to think of its program in philosophical terms.

To enrich our deliberations, we researched the church's history in the school's archives; visited other schools and spoke with their chaplains; and consulted with PEA faculty and some three dozen students representing both those aligned with particular religions and those who might describe themselves as not religious.

The Reverend Jamie Hamilton (left) offers a blessing at the Sunday Christian worship service held in the church's nave.