“When you work here, it’s a privilege to be able to kind of walk through it daily and to see all these different things,” said Andy Tune, who, with his wife Rachel, is a pastor to the university. “I’ve been here 14 years, but it seems like I’ll still see things that I never noticed before. It just has so many details.”
Tune said he enjoys the scripture verses that are inscribed on the chapel’s walls, carvings of prominent Biblical figures like Moses on the ceilings and the mural that shows the Old and New Testaments and the angels and saints in heaven.
The 24 stained glass panes, depicting the history of Wittenberg from Germany to Springfield, are also a point of pride. The figures in the windows are outlined in solid lead with the glass used only as background.
“It’s an unusual style of stained glass, especially on a sunny afternoon when the light comes in and you see the play of the light from the glass on the pews and everything, it’s pretty spectacular,” Tune said.
Weaver Chapel is the highest ranked modern cathedral on the list and in the company of celebrated works of architecture like Basilica of the Sacred Heart, Notre Dame, Ind.; Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, Spain; and King’s College Chapel in Cambridge, England, said Kevin Rose, historian at the Turner Foundation.
“It’s flattering, I think, for this community when you look at the company it’s in,” he said.
Rose, a Wittenberg graduate, called the building “timeless” and fitting with the campus’ historic look despite its modern roots.
“It’s amazing that this is the highest ranked modern site, and it just shows that we have amazing architecture here in the community that we sometimes take for granted, like Weaver Chapel,” Rose said.
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