That an Anglican university has an Anglican chaplain is perhaps a correlation so obvious, and to which we are so thoroughly habituated, that we may all too easily underestimate the symbolic value of the chaplain as a public and conspicuous Anglican. The authority and reach of the chaplain as symbol is also noticeably enhanced in circumstances where that person is directly managed by the Vice-Chancellor (who might be a public Anglican too). While the symbolic power of the chaplain may be damaged by poor personal reputation, it is probably not significantly enhanced by positive actions. Rather, like a walking sandwich board, or an inert church spire, the sheer presence of a recognisable chaplain is sufficient, perhaps, to raise the possibility of a set of questions which, if only sub-consciously recognised, speak of the rumour of God and of the prospect that there exists a transcendent beyond.
But this symbolic power is delicately related to the chaplain’s apparent redundancy. The symbol is undone and collapses if the place of the chaplain becomes explicable and justifiable in other terms, especially the routine terms of the University. To view a chaplain within a ‘secular’ purview via a set of pragmatic, tangible contributions (e.g. to student retention, improvement of employability via volunteering, enhancement of ‘student experience’, even as marketing tool) is like melting down a coin for the value of its metal (viz. Nietzsche); it makes no sense.
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