Sounds of Faith

A concert this semester at Duke Chapel explored “700 Years of a Biblical Love Song.” The performance was the culmination of a yearlong exploration of musical settings of the love poetry in the Bible’s “Song of Songs” (or “Song of Solomon”). In this episode, we hear musical highlights from the concert and learn from Dr. Philip Cave, the Chapel's conductor-in-residence, about the pieces' passion, co...

For forty-four years, Steve Hinkle has presented the Christian gospel at Duke and other campuses as a leader in the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship campus ministry. Along the way, he has served as a staff member for the Christian Medical and Dental Association and as interim Religious Life director for Duke Chapel—and also gave up driving his car for a year. This summer, he will retire with deca...

Each week, Duke Chapel Organ Scholar David Lim plays the Chapel’s four organs dozens of times for services, weddings, rehearsals, demonstrations, and concerts. He is honing his skills as a church musician—from arranging music to administration to leading rehearsals—before he heads on to a job this summer as a parish music director. In this episode, we talk with Dr. David Lim, and hear him play, to...

“What I love about poetry is … how the words take you to wordlessness." That was one of the many insights former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo offered during her appearance at Duke Chapel's 2026 Pluralism Lecture. The event, "Poetry and Spirituality," began with a poetry reading by Harjo, and then she sat down for an extended conversation with Duke Chapel Dean Luke Powery. The discussion, presented...

College is a place for studying, forming friendships, cheering for sports teams—and for some students it’s also a time of exploration into meaning, identity, and belief. That is where “Say the Thing” comes in. It is an initiative from Duke Chapel and Duke’s Kenan Institute for Ethics to creatively engage students—about 40% of whom don’t identify with a traditional religion—with life's enduring que...

For about sixty years, the United in Praise student group has performed gospel and praise music in services, concerts, and ceremonies on campus and in the Durham community. The group traces its roots to the mid-Sixties when Black students joined with a local church to form the Modern Black Mass Choir. In the decades since, the group has adopted its current name and become recognized as an official...

As part of Duke University, Duke Chapel is located in Durham, North Carolina. It’s a home city that has much to celebrate as a growing community with a vibrant cultural scene as well as a reputation for technological innovation. But, like most cities, Durham wrestles with homelessness, economic inequality, a history of racial injustice, mental health care, and other challenges. Duke Chapel seeks t...

Growing out of Duke’s centennial celebration, a new project collects oral histories from Black alumni of the four universities designated for support by James B. Duke’s 1924 indenture of trust—Duke, Davidson, Furman, and Johnson C. Smith. The Rev. Dr. M. Keith Daniel led a research team to collect dozens of interviews with members of Black families who began, and continued, legacies at the Duke En...

After serving more than twenty-eight years as a custodian at Duke Chapel, Oscar Dantzler is retiring. His approach mixing hands-on cleaning with warm welcomes to people of all kinds landed him a spot in the 2009 documentary Philosopher Kings. In 2016, he received Duke’s highest honor for distinguished service, the University Medal, for his caretaking of Duke’s Chapel and its students. In this epis...

During a recent Duke Chapel Sunday morning worship service, Chapel organist Chad Fothergill opened the service with a late-seventeenth-century French composition, accompanied the choir in a chant he composed, swapped melodic phrases with a colleague playing a second organ, and then closed the service by playing seven minutes of improvised music. That is a taste of the versatility Fothergill brings...

The audience filled the pews of Duke Chapel for this year’s William Preston Few Lecture on October 9. In this episode of Sounds of Faith, we listen to that public conversation on “Faith, Sports, and Leadership” with Hall of Fame coach Mike Krzyzewski. “I believe in God,” Coach K says in the discussion with Duke Chapel Dean Luke Powery. “My path in that belief was the Catholic faith. It’s been a st...

Music, and especially the spirituals, is an important part of Duke Chapel Dean Luke Powery’s preaching, scholarship, and Christian faith. A Baptist minister and professor of homiletics at Duke’s Divinity School, Dean Powery says the Spirituals “are musical memorabilia created on the anvil of misery in the crucible of inhumane slavery,” that have become “a wellspring of wisdom quite distinct from s...

Dr. Robert Parkins’s career at Duke has spanned five decades, and the music in his recent farewell recital spanned three centuries. A professor of the practice of music and university organist at Duke, Dr. Parkins performed on all three of the Duke Chapel’s main organs, employing each for the musical era to which it is best suited. In this episode, Dr. Parkins reflects on his forty-seven years of...

In a world of political, cultural, and religious divisions, Professor John Inazu makes the case for a public discourse characterized by what he calls “confident pluralism.” Dr. Inazu spoke at Duke Chapel on March 27 for the Chapel’s inaugural Pluralism Lecture with a talk entitled “Pluralism, Particularity, and Possibility.” An expert on the First Amendment, Inazu is the Sally D. Danforth Distingu...

As an Organ Scholar at Duke Chapel, Katherine Johnson has taken on a robust schedule of practice, performance, service playing, and accompaniment as well as conducting and singing in the Chapel’s choirs. While honing her craft under the mentorship of Chapel Music staff, she has tackled a broad repertoire of music, performing on the Chapel’s three main organs as well as its portable continuo instru...

During an all-day prayer service on January 17, 2025, in Duke Divinity School’s Goodson Chapel, ministers and musicians from Duke Chapel joined students, faculty, and staff in chanting all 150 of the Bible’s Psalms. The service was notable not only for its length and monastic quality but also for the Psalm texts being used. All of them were original translations by Dr. Ellen Davis, the Amos Ragan...

While still serving a decades-long prison sentence, the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Chavis received permission to deliver a sermon at Duke Chapel for a 1979 service memorializing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. An assistant of Dr. King’s in the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Chavis would eventually be pardoned for his alleged crimes and go on to serve as the executive director of the NAACP, among many othe...

A new art exhibition at Duke Chapel aims to represent theological truths about hope, love, and the presence of God in moments of ordinary human interactions. Titled "Imagination and Promise: The Theological Aesthetics of Hope," the exhibition presents pencil drawings of people on cut paper layered on backgrounds textured by water marbling, gold ink, and ashes. The artist who created "Imagination a...

As Christmas approaches, Duke Chapel Music Director Zebulon Highben is one of the few people who will not only be singing and listening to favorite Christmas carols but also conducting and composing them. In addition to overseeing the Chapel’s music program, Dr. Highben is an associate professor of the practice of church music at Duke Divinity School and editor of the "Music from Duke Chapel" publ...

Ten years ago musicians marched down the center aisle of Duke Chapel to open the Chapel’s first service of Jazz Vespers. The service combines the ancient Christian tradition of evening prayer, or Vespers, with the American musical tradition of Jazz. Since it began a decade ago, Jazz Vespers has developed a kind of “congregation” of hundreds of people coming from on campus and the surrounding commu...

The Chapel's 2024 William Preston Few Lecture will be given on November 19 by the Irish poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama whose books range from memoir to poetry to devotional guide—often blending all three genres. In advance of Ó Tuama's appearance at the Chapel, this episode explores the intersection of poetry and prayer with the Rev. Dr. Lauren Winner, associate professor of Christian spiritu...

Day of the Dead altars, a tradition developed in Mexico, present foods, photos, candles, and other objects that honor deceased loved ones. Influenced by Aztec and Catholic beliefs, the altars, or Ofrendas, can be set up in homes or public spaces during celebrations of Día de los Muertos or All Saints and All Souls Day at the start of November. Through November 7, Duke Chapel is hosting a large ofr...

Day of the Dead altars, a tradition developed in Mexico, present foods, photos, candles, and other objects that honor deceased loved ones. Influenced by Aztec and Catholic beliefs, the altars, or Ofrendas, can be set up in homes or public spaces during celebrations of Día de los Muertos or All Saints and All Souls Day at the start of November. Through November 7, Duke Chapel is hosting a large ofr...

Johann Sebastian Bach's church cantatas are often considered the pinnacle of German sacred music, works whose theological depth and emotional resonance touch deep places in the human soul. This year, Duke Chapel’s Bach Cantata Series follows J. S. Bach's career and creative process from his early days in Arnstadt, Mühlhausen, and Weimar, and then on to Cöthen, and finally, Leipzig. Directed by the...

The vibrant images and elegant hand-drawn script of The Saint John’s Bible have inspired scholars, preachers, musicians, and artists in their creative works. Commissioned by Saint John's Abbey and University in Minnesota, The Saint John’s Bible was created by a team of artists led by calligrapher Donald Jackson using traditional materials such as vellum, ancient inks, gold leaf, and quill pens. Al...