By Alan Cherry
Moody Coliseum may hold the answer for questioning students looking for a Chapel to attend on Tuesdays. 2010 is the recently launched Campus Conversation led by Dr. Steven Moore, assistant professor of English, and Kevin Claypool, residence director for Edwards Hall.
“[2010] is meant to be about addressing controversial issues and topics that Christians stray away from,” Moore said.
2010, which has a high attendance compared to other Tuesday Chapels, is intended to provide a safe forum to openly discuss potentially sticky topics, such as homosexuality, political corruption, art and relationships. The Chapel will continue all semester, with different discussions each week.
The student population generally seemed to be engaged in the entire conversation.
“The Chapel was interesting,” said Ryan Cantrell, sophomore broadcast journalism major from Keller. “It seemed to be a forced conversation between Dr. Moore and Kevin Claypool. However, the topics that were talked about were interesting, and it was good to hear other students’ opinions.”
The sessions begin with Moore and Claypool on stage arguing the extreme sides of a controversial issue. However, through constructed dialogue, they tend to moderate the views they presented at the start, and after several minutes of debate, the floor is opened for students to participate and express their views to the group for the last few minutes of Chapel.
Tuesday’s discussion was about love and relationships as part of ACU’s Sacred Relationships Week. The Chapel opened with a clip about dating expectations versus dating realities from the movie 500 Days of Summer. The clip set the tone for the discussion, with Dr. Moore arguing dating and looking for love are a setup for disappointment, and Claypool arguing true love is possible.
As the discussion progressed, the two perspectives merged into a somewhat more moderate opinion that incorporated ideas from the audience, as is usually the case.
“Love is a choice, romantically and otherwise,” Moore said. “Be patient with each other.”
