University of Chicago Divinity School

The Baptist Theological Union (BTU) had founded the Seminary, established in 1865, "alongside" the Old University of Chicago which opened nine years earlier in 1856.

The Divinity School is located in Swift Hall, on the main quadrangle of the university's campus in close proximity to the Divisions of the Humanities and the Social Sciences for interdisciplinary work.

Martin E. Marty, a historian of modern Christianity, worked closely with Dean Kitagawa to formulate the purposes and operation of the institute within the context of the Divinity School's general mission of teaching and graduate research.

Affiliated faculty include Daniel A. Arnold, Steven Collins, Paul Copp, Matthew Kapstein, James Ketelaar, Gary A. Tubb, and Christian K. Wedemeyer.

These include: the John Gray Rhind Award, to an advanced student in the ministry program at the Divinity School whose excellence in academic and professional training gives notable promise of a significant contribution to the life of the church, and the J. Coert Rylaarsdam Prize, to a student who has made special efforts, curricular or extracurricular, to promote interfaith relations, particularly between the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim traditions.

The school also awards the Divinity School Prize for Excellence in Teaching, to recognise the efforts of doctoral students in their teaching, and the Tikva Frymer-Kensky Memorial Prize, for a student who has written the most accomplished essay integrating the materials and insights of at least two of the fields to which Professor Frymer-Kensky's own scholarship contributed: Hebrew Bible, biblical law, ancient Near Eastern studies, and ritual and/or feminist theology.

Both Swift Hall and Bond Chapel were designed by the architects Coolidge and Hodgdon at the end of the Gothic revival period in America.

The chapel was given by Mrs. Joseph Bond in memory of her husband, a former Trustee of the Baptist Theological Union, the predecessor institution of the Divinity School.

Bond's daughter, Elfleda, married Edgar J. Goodspeed, a member of the university faculty noted for his translation of the New Testament.

As a Divinity School chapel in a major university, its main function is to provide a sanctuary for reflection, worship, and community gatherings.