At 2:30 p.m. every Sunday, approximately 30 Harvard undergraduates shuffle into an unassuming red brick building on the corner of Longfellow Park and Brattle St., arriving from across campus in groups of three or four. On this chilly February afternoon, the students remove their coats to reveal conservative church attire—dresses and skirts for women, slacks and button-downs for men. They gather in the foyer, chat with church members, and slowly stream into the chapel, filling in pews row by row until the entire room is packed with young adults. This is the Cambridge congregation for unmarried Latter-day Saints, known better to non-members as Mormons.
The congregation on Longfellow Park primarily consists of students—mostly undergraduates—from Harvard, MIT, and other Boston-area universities. The building houses three worship meetings on Sundays, the first of which is called the Sacrament Meeting, that together last until approximately 5:30 pm. The chapel walls are white and unadorned, disrupted only by large glass windows that allow soft, yellow sunlight to fill the room. The unobtrusive appearance of the chapel aptly reflects the Sacrament Meeting’s tone—quiet, dignified, and above all, humble.
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