Campus wide conversations on race, culture, and privilege ensued. And now, with the passage of time, students seem to have become acclimated to the new style of worship. A new student survey indicates opposition has dwindled to negligible levels. “How can I explain the mood on campus? It’s better than last semester. Last semester, it was just way out of hand….

WENHAM — The chapel is the one place at this small, liberal arts Christian college along the North Shore where 40 faith traditions converge, the one place where Gordon College’s 1,700 students come together to worship and praise.

But it became the place where the college community splintered last semester. Some students balked at how the new worship leader ushered in a spirit of praise, incorporating gospel-tinged songs and hymns. Their displeasure aired on social media and in a survey. The fissure exposed simmering racial tensions and brought forth stories of intentional and unintentional acts of exclusion, discrimination, and misunderstanding.

“I tend to lead in a way that is typical in the black church: demonstrative, leading the congregation, not just singing the songs,” Bil Mooney-McCoy said after a recent chapel service. “For a lot of our students, this was wonderful and they loved it. But others felt like this was just crazy stuff they never heard before.”

Campus wide conversations on race, culture, and privilege ensued. And now, with the passage of time, students seem to have become acclimated to the new style of worship. A new student survey indicates opposition has dwindled to negligible levels.

“How can I explain the mood on campus? It’s better than last semester. Last semester, it was just way out of hand,” said Shakia Arston, a junior and vice president of the student multicultural association. “There are people who are being touched and being changed. But you have those people who are like, ‘I could care less about white privilege and the racial divide and how you feel.’ ”

Mooney-McCoy arrived at Gordon College at the beginning of the school year as the director of Christian life and worship, a job that entails creating an atmosphere in which people can encounter God through music. He leads mandatory chapel services twice a week, with students swiping their ID cards as the service ends to make sure they receive their chapel credits.

Soon after Mooney-McCoy arrived, some students began tweeting their dislike of the worship director’s style during chapel services, which the college says are supposed to familiarize students with a variety of worship practices. From the pews of the brick building at the center of campus, there were, and continue to be, the occasional snarky missives on Twitter.

“5 bucks says this guy won’t be leading music on prospective student days,” one student tweeted on Sept. 4.

The same day another student tweeted: “Didn’t know Marvin Gay [sic] was leading chapel worship.”

And then there was an article by The Tartan, the student newspaper, which exposed the tensions by reporting the October results of the monthly student survey, which said about one-third of students found the changes during chapel services off-putting.

“Survey comments said the chapel ‘should not feel like a performance;’ that a leader should not ‘take the spotlight’ or sing in a ‘ridiculous manner,’ ” the student paper reported in its Nov. 8 issue.

The whole situation — the survey and the story — felt like a personal attack, said Mooney-McCoy and his supervisor, Jennifer Jukanovich, associate vice president for student development.

Mooney-McCoy holds a master’s degree in jazz piano from the New England Conservatory of Music and regularly joins the eight-student chapel band, playing the guitar and bass, but mostly the keyboard. The keyboard is the most important instrument in black church music, but, he said, it is the most dispensable in white contemporary music.

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