Inside the Paris-Yates Chapel

By Michael Harrelson, editor, HottyToddy.com

michael.harrelson@hottytoddy.com

The Paris-Yates Chapel at Ole Miss is among the newer buildings on the central campus, but its origins date back to 1975, when students chose a campus chapel as a charitable project. With the assistance of alumni, the students raised $12,000 for the chapel fund. The following year, then Chancellor Porter L. Fortune, Jr. appointed a committee to plan the future chapel.

Along with choosing a design for the chapel, the committee also was charged with suggesting possible sites for its location.

The committee’s recommended a traditional chapel, centrally located, as a “setting for interdenominational worship services and rooms for prayer, meditation, Bible study, small discussion groups, counseling, and weddings.”

More than a quarter of a century after the idea was conceived, the 200-seat chapel was dedicated in April, 2001 as “a quiet place for prayer, meditation, and worship in the heart of a busy university campus.”