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October 30, 2008, 08:08 AM ET
Guest Blogger: In 1963, 'Touchdown Jesus' Balanced the Modern Against the Quest for Truth
The U. of Notre Dame opened the Theodore M. Hesburgh Library in 1963. (Margaret Grubiak photo)
For fans of the University of Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish, the figure of “Touchdown Jesus” looms large — quite literally. The 134-foot granite mural of Jesus with outstretched arms rises just beyond the university stadium’s northern goalposts. This Roman Catholic university seems to call upon the highest of powers to bless its football enterprise.
Margaret Grubiak
Behind the cheeky notion of “Touchdown Jesus” is the story of how Modernism, and Modernist architecture, arrived at Notre Dame. The mural’s name is actually “The Word of Life,” taken from the first lines of the Gospel of John, and the work is an integral part of the Theodore M. Hesburgh Library. When it opened in 1963, this 13-story building represented nothing less than Notre Dame’s attempt to become a modern American university of the first rank.
While Modernism and religion often appear as competing forces in the American university, as I have explored in other posts, the Hesburgh Library is an example in which the two consciously merged. When Father Hesburgh became president of Notre Dame in 1952, he set out an ambitious goal: “Notre Dame must be recognized not only as a great Catholic university but as a great university — comparable to all the leading private and state educational institutions.” Central to meeting this goal was construction of a modern research library.
The design that the Minnesota firm Ellerbe Associates (now Ellerbe Becket) created for the library placed the building firmly within a Modernist lineage. The library’s organization — a tower upon a plinth — recalls Gordon Bunshaft’s
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