Yale University and Yale Divinity School, long considered centers of liberalism, are witnessing a resurgence of evangelical activity.
Organizations such as Campus Crusade for Christ and the Theological Students Fellowship (TSF) are active on the New Haven, Connecticut, campus. In addition, a new Christian Study Center is having an impact on both the divinity school and the surrounding community.
One of Yale’s leading evangelical activists is Randy Thompson, who earned a master of divinity degree there in 1980. He and some colleagues organized the Christian Study Center two years ago to promote church renewal in the New Haven area and to provide support and fellowship for evangelicals at Yale. The center operates out of the six-room apartment where Thompson lives with his wife and two children.
The Episcopal layman says evangelicals at Yale experience “creative tension” with more liberal Christians. “I find it enormously useful to have someone ask me, ‘Should we evangelize or not?’—a question that one would not likely face at an evangelical seminary.”
The Christian Study Center offers evening classes in Bible Greek, Old and New Testament studies, inner healing, and an introduction to C. S. Lewis. This year the center lined up such evangelical heavyweights as Richard Lovelace and John Stott to lecture at the school.
The divinity school’s tradition of “taking the classical Christian tradition with utmost seriousness” attracts evangelicals, says Dean Leander Keck, a minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). He points to faculty members who emphasize a knowledge of the Bible and to the school’s emphasis on historical theology.
“We still take the canon very seriously,” Keck says. At the same time, he points out, “the school as a school doesn’t have a position” on most theological questions.
In addition to the Christian Study Center, a TSF group has operated at Yale Divinity School for the past year. Its leader, Rocky Black, is studying for a master of divinity degree at Yale.
“I think there’s a certain sort of increasing amenability to the evangelical voice [at Yale],” Black says. “But I think people at the divinity school are still reticent to have the evangelical tag placed on them.”
A member of the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, Black says TSF lectures have attracted as many as 60 students. He says evangelicals are still thought to be “myopic” on such topics as homosexuality. At the same time, he says, “the administration is very encouraging in terms of allowing evangelicals to organize.”
Campus Crusade for Christ has been operating at Yale University for four years under the leadership of Miles Ahrens, a Southern Baptist minister with a degree in biomedical engineering from Brown University. “I think that there is more of an interest in spiritual life in general, and I think evangelical Christianity has been a part of that,” he says.
RELIGIOUS NEWS SERVICE
Cbn Cancels Its Christian Soap Opera
After 875 episodes, a Christian daytime drama known as the “soap with hope” was canceled last month. “Another Life” was produced by CBN Cable Network, a subsidiary of Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network.
The soap opera’s hybrid presentation of Hollywood dilemmas and gospel solutions modeled a new approach to “religious” programming and attracted about 500,000 viewers as well as positive notices in broadcast journals.
However, its commercial sponsors—including Richardson Vicks, General Mills, and Kraft—did not provide enough advertising revenue to keep the show afloat. Each half-hour episode cost an estimated $19,000 to produce, and the show aired daily for three and a half years.
“We plan to take all the resources from ‘Another Life’ and put them into prime-time television so we can draw a bigger audience,” said Earl Weirich, spokesman for CBN Cable Network. New programs being developed include “Butterfly Island,” an adventure filmed in Australia, and “The Campbells,” a drama about a pioneer family emigrating from Scotland to Canada.
