Month: January 2016

A recent opinion piece by Mary Worthen in the New York Times suggests that American evangelicals continue to adapt in creative ways to the secularization of the American college campus. Her article, which focuses primarily on large, private institutions in which nondiscrimination policies have complicated life for some evangelical Christian ministries, offers a surprising discovery:

As mainstream culture becomes more diverse and moves further away from traditional Christian teachings on matters like sexuality, we might expect evangelical students on elite secular campuses to feel more embattled than ever. Yet that’s not what I found when I spoke to a range of students and recent graduates.

Contrary to conservatives’ warnings about the oppressive secularism of the modern university, these students have taken advantage of their campuses’ multicultural marketplace of ideas. They have created a network of organizations and journals that engage non-Christian ideologies head-on.

For example, student Andrew Schuman is reported to have described this kind of engagement as asking students “to think critically, question honestly, and link arms with anyone who searches for truth and authenticity.”

Given the interests that motivate this blog, it seems worth encouraging more conversation about the degree to which (and how) such students at these largely secular institutions are engaging questions of vocation, and whether these off-campus evangelical organizations and journals are providing them with an opportunity to do so. And it would be useful if readers of this blog could link to some examples.