Some positive news. This sort of alignment may be the future... Sent from my iPhone
Begin forwarded message: > From: Stuart Foster <[email protected]> > Date: October 12, 2014 at 05:19:31 PDT > To: Stuart and Sindia Foster <[email protected]> > Subject: Really amazing article about a Christians ministering on college > campuses (with a quote from our son) > Reply-To: [email protected] > >> This was published in the Daily Beast >> >> link: >> >>> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/12/can-christians-still-go-to-harvard.html >>> >>> Written by Kirsten Powers >>> Jonathan Merritt >>> Questions, Questions >>> >>> 10.12.14 >>> Can Christians Still Go to Harvard? >>> >>> America’s colleges are increasingly hostile to religion, but Veritas, a >>> Christian organization, has found a way to thrive. >>> It’s become standard Christian folklore that America’s elite universities >>> are the killing fields of religious faith. >>> >>> The stats indicate this may be more than mere legend. According to LifeWay >>> Research, 70 percent of young adults who indicated they attended church >>> regularly for at least one year in high school drop out of organized >>> religion during their college years. Almost two-thirds return to regular >>> church attendance later on, so there seems to be something about their >>> experiences during this life phase that pushes them away from religion. >>> >>> But amid this abysmal picture of floundering faith is a story of hope and >>> perhaps a model for how faith might thrive at even the most secular >>> institutions. >>> >>> It’s called The Veritas Forum, a national Christian organization founded by >>> Harvard students 20 years ago. They host events at universities across the >>> country that seek to “engage students and faculty in discussions about >>> life’s hardest questions and the relevance of Jesus Christ.” >>> >>> Veritas, meaning “truth” in Latin, is not your fundamentalist grandmother’s >>> Christian group. Their forums take place at America’s top >>> universities—including the Ivies—and the questions they address are not >>> simplistic spiritual queries. For example: >>> >>> • Duke University’s forum asked whether science has rendered God irrelevant. >>> • Harvard University’s forum asked whether belief in the supernatural and >>> miracles was irrational. >>> • University of California at Berkeley’s forum probed the nature of reality. >>> • Emory University’s forum surveyed the intersection between faith and >>> genetics to ask key questions about human identity. >>> • MIT’s forum looked invited a robotics professor to explore what it means >>> to be human. >>> >>> The Veritas forum is everything that Christians, many of whom have suffered >>> under the stereotype of being anti-intellectual, want to be: thoughtfully >>> engaged in America’s marketplace of ideas while holding steadfast to the >>> core tenets of their faith. And this mix of intellectualism and >>> faithfulness is filling an unmet need among students on many of these >>> campuses. >>> >>> Columbia University senior and Veritas participant Avantika Kurmar says, >>> “Veritas fills that role of providing a space for Christians and >>> non-Christians to seek truth together. A lot of people—Christian or >>> not—have the hard questions that Veritas seeks to investigate.” >>> >>> One of Veritas’ secrets to success seems to be their tone and tenor. Rather >>> than lecture why non-Christians are wrong or use their events as an >>> opportunity for stealth proselytizing to secular students, the forums seek >>> to facilitate dialogues where religious perspectives are heard and >>> considered against other views. >>> >>> Ashley Byrd, a regional director of Veritas, attributes the organization’s >>> flourishing to the fact that they are not “afraid or defensive and instead >>> cast a more compelling vision of what it means to be in deep relationship >>> where your respect for each other isn’t dependent on agreeing on >>> everything.” He added that sometimes Christian students feel they have to >>> hide their faith to fit in, but “We tell students, ‘You don’t need to fake >>> it.’” >>> >>> But aren’t students mistreated for their faith, as we so often hear? Luke >>> Foster, current president of Columbia’s Veritas Forum says that while >>> mistreatment isn’t unheard of, more often they are just treated “like a >>> curiosity in a museum.” >>> >>> Even a skeptical agnostic like Torsten Odland, a 21-year-old Columbia >>> senior who has attended Veritas Forums, has found himself supporting their >>> cause. He says that the forum confronts the “perennial questions that >>> underlie a lot of what we study. They provide something … I think is >>> missing at Columbia in some respects.” >>> >>> “There should be someone posing these questions,” Odland says. “The more >>> that college is viewed as a site to prepare for a job, just a >>> pre-professional location for you to jump into one particular stream and >>> start your life, there isn’t really a place in that for a real focus on the >>> questions that Veritas finds interesting.” >>> >>> The work of Veritas demonstrates that faith can survive, and even thrive, >>> on America’s college campuses. >>> >>> >> > -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. 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