Christianity on the Campus

SKEPTICAL GENERATION—I think there is no question that the vital core of this generation is engaged in a spiritual and intellectual temporizing action; essentially and bodily skeptical, it operates behind a mask of attentive compliance in order to preserve pleasures it understands. It lives in a medium of low pressure doubt which would be intolerable to anyone that ever experienced the exhilaration of a conviction.—Professor F. J. KAUFFMAN, the University of Rochester, “Be Careful Young Men—Tomorrow’s Leaders Analyzed by Today’s Teachers,” Nation (March, 1957).

QUEST FOR MEANING—What every young person seeks in college from liberal education—whether or not he has articulated this—is self discovery.… What such a person wants—what we all want—is a meaning that becomes a motivating force in our lives. And when we ask this question, whether we are conscious of it or not, we have begun to think religiously, and have begun to ask of God.—NATHAN M. PUSEY, president of Harvard University, “Religion’s Role in Liberal Education,” Religion and Freedom of Thought (1954).

A ONE-SIDED CURRICULUM—Many students go through four years of college and become fairly well equipped for their particular profession without ever being forced seriously to consider the most basic questions of life. In the busy curriculum, concern for acquiring the “how” of making a living has largely replaced the inquiring “why” of existence and ultimate purpose in life.—CHARLES E. HUMMEL, Campus Christian Witness (1958).

SURVEY OF 25 CAMPUSES—We found no religious revival on the campuses we visited. There was an honest interest in what religion has to offer; on some campuses, administrative officers and chaplains reported an increase in the number attending chapel and church services.… On the other hand, contrary to some accusations, we did not find the college student to be antireligious. We would term it, rather, in many cases a suspension of consideration and a questioning of the traditional approaches to religious belief. Students of all faiths, as well as those with no fixed beliefs, told us again and again that they were uninspired by the usual pattern of religious activity.… We are led to believe that the student response to religion is conditioned heavily by the current strongly relativistic social thought. Many students react against absolutism in any form, and, to them, religion is purely and simply absolutism.—EDWARD D. EDDY, JR., The College Influence on Student Character (1959).

ACADEMIC HOMECOMING—A spate of books by both theologians and educators offers sufficient proof that the mind’s adventure has struck tents in the secular land to seek a better country. Who knows where it may next pitch camp? There are verdicts to which men return and return. Signs appear that education may return to the Biblical faith which has long been its secret home. The Biblical faith in such a journey will not be Biblical faith as the Victorian era construed it, but Biblical faith as education itself has helped newly to interpret it—a faith, illuminated by modern scholarship and rediscovered under the shocks and realities of our apocalyptic time. That faith, twisted by our finite hankerings, may easily become the “indoctrination” against which education rightly raises its barriers; but such indoctrination is now a smaller threat than an arid secularism.—Dr. GEORGE ARTHUR BUTTRICK, professor emeritus, Harvard University, Biblical Thought and the Secular University (1960).

FACULTY ATTITUDE DIVIDED—In American college faculties two points of view, each one persuasive and admirable, will be found among the more responsible scholars. I have in mind now the whole question of religion on the campus.… On the one hand … probably a majority view … is that of an agnostic but devoted concern for learning and the search for truth … for the ideal of a non-divisive pluralism in this quest, for freedom from any kind of pressure or authoritarianism.… The hidden sleeper in this ostensible freedom and tolerance is that wittingly or unwittingly it opens the door wide to positivist indoctrination and dogmatic relativism. In this stand for an untrammeled pursuit of truth, safeguards are set up against authoritarian pressures of all kinds including those of religion but not against equally authoritarian negations. The other admirable position … asks for full recognition, in ways appropriate to today, of the religious heritage of the college or university, and of our society, as a profoundly corrective factor in this same search for truth.… It asks that our vital religious traditions … should have full freedom in the open market of higher education and learning to make their impact and be assessed and criticized like all the other main forces of culture and the intellectual life.… In all areas of college instruction the danger of authoritarian indoctrination should be controlled by policy in appointment and by the intellectual morale of the campus, not by excluding controversial subject matter from the curriculum.—AMOS N. WILDER, “Christianity and the Campus,” New Republic (Dec. 15, 1959).

THE BIBLE IN EDUCATION—We cannot believe that ignorance of the Bible is a suitable hallmark of educated men. A working acquaintance with the two Testaments seems to us so obviously fundamental as not to require argument.—“General Education in School and College,” a committee report by faculty members of Andover, Exeter, Lawrenceville, Harvard, Princeton, and Yale (1952).

LOSS OF ORIGINAL PURPOSE—The purpose of it all [college education], in the words of the Harvard charter of 1650, was “the advancement of all good literature, arts and Sciences” in the framework of eternity: “The maine end … is, to know God and Jesus Christ.” In proclaiming these goals, the charter was speaking not only for Harvard, but, as it turned out, for the old-time college in general.… At the zenith of its power and influence 100 years ago, the single-minded college was, before the end of the 19th century, to lose its position.… The flood that engulfed them came from three main sources: the new western state universities, German scholarship and higher criticism, and the philosophy of evolution.—GEORGE P. SCHMIDT, professor emeritus of history, Rutgers University, “A Century of the Liberal Arts College,” School and Society (May 5, 1962).

Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here.