Many New England boarding schools were founded as nonreligious institutions, or as vaguely, nonspecifically Protestant ones. They required chapel attendance, more to promote a sense of community, or to somehow inculcate Christian virtue, than to offer communion or solidify a prayer life. Until 1969, Exeter students were required to attend a weekly religious service of some sort: Roman Catholic students could head to a church in town, Jewish students might go to the town of Portsmouth for services, Protestants could attend Sunday worship here in Phillips Church.

Then, in the 1960s and ’70s, mandatory religion was abolished at many prep schools, often replaced by an academic requirement of a couple of classes in religion and philosophy. When I attended the Loomis Chaffee School, in Connecticut, the only function of the school chaplain, as far as I could tell, was to offer a prayer at graduation every year.

In 1988, Exeter, which also had been in the religious doldrums, had an opportunity to rethink its spiritual life. Phillips Church needed repairs, and school policy requires that before any major renovation there be an assessment of the building’s usage and purpose, to ensure that the refurbished building will meet contemporary needs. A small faculty committee interviewed students, visited other schools, talked to their chaplains and eventually issued a report that affirmed the need for a space like Phillips Church — but seen in a new way.

“The Ministry of Phillips Church needs to be as concerned with the religious dimension of all of our lives as it is with the particular religious needs of any one of us,” the report read. It needs “to be as concerned with the questions of a seeker of religion as it is with the practice of a follower of any particular religion.”

And so a major renovation, completed in 2002, added smaller, versatile spaces to the main chapel. There is now a Muslim prayer room, in the church basement. A puja room, for Hindu prayers, is being refurbished. In 2011, the school dedicated an ark, now holding two Torah scrolls. There are spaces for Buddhist meditation, yoga and — of course — conviviality, talk and lots of eating. Along the way, according to the students and teachers I met, religious culture has been reinvigorated, too.