Airport chapels offer haven to more faiths

It seems that across the U.S. chapels that have been designed to offer passengers refuge and reflection in bustling airports are making changes. They are removing denomination-specific decor, adding special accommodations and hosting services geared to accommodate an increasingly diverse group of travelers flying with faith. While public chapels like those in airports used to be more Christian (and even denomination) oriented, now they are deliberately being made into more inclusive places for rest, contemplation, prayer, etc.

While I'm glad to see more inclusivity and openness being explicitly practiced as an adjustment to the great amount of religious plurality and diversity we have in the U.S., there's a part of me that enjoys the religious specificity of places of worship or prayer. I understand that the airports are attempting to be non-discriminatory and accommodating to the variety of people from many different faiths, it can turn a place of reflection and respite into a watered-down, rather generic, place to be. I think it can take away some of the spiritual uniqueness of a particular chapel if it is stripped of it's original religious affliliation. This is a different story if various religious relics, statues, pictures, and symbols from different traditions are being added to a chapel. This could serve to heighten the religious richness and depth to a sacred space. But I'm more concerned about displacing the "religiosity" and "sacredness" of a chapel by taking away specific religious things so as to make the place less "offensive" to other faiths and more "universal" in nature. But what's the meaning and use of a room that looks and thus feels just like any other room except that it says "chapel" on the doorway?

I know of a certain space at a school that used to be employed specifically for Buddhist meditation and ritual. But recently decisions were made to make this space more accommodating and appealing (non-offensive) for non-Buddhist students and most of the Buddhist paraphanalia were removed, leaving the room looking empty and feeling desolate and spiritually deserted. As a Christian, I would've rather prayed in a room that had Buddhist statues, paintings, and altars than in one that is totally devoid of any religious symbology.

Though this stripping away of religious symbols and texts is not what chapels are said to be doing (rather adding materials from different traditions), it's still an acute tendency in an effort towards openness and inclusivity. Let's celebrate plurality and diversity rather than take away all religious uniqueness and dilute spiritual expression to a "universal religion" or none.

Anyway, the Atlanta Journal Constitution has the story at Faith in Public Life.