Is Sunday School a Lost Cause?

The New Catholic Encyclopedia calls the Sunday-school movement “probably the most far-reaching educational activity in the field of religion since the Reformation.” The Sunday school for factory workers that Robert Raikes established almost 200 years ago in Gloucester, England, soon reproduced itself around the world. Just eleven years later, in 1791, the Philadelphia Sunday School Union began establishing new Sunday schools. Almost everywhere the expansion of the Sunday school was phenomenal; within a century there were more than 100,000. By 1906, in the United States alone, 13 million pupils were enrolled, and by 1960, 37 million.

In recognition of the 150th anniversary of the American Sunday-School Union, which sponsors more than 1,600 Sunday schools in thirty-nine states, a panel of Christian leaders recently faced the movement’s present-day difficulties and pointed toward some solutions. Members of the panel were The Honorable John B. Anderson, United States congressman from Illinois, a distinguished layman whose home church in Rockford (First Evangelical Free) sponsored rural Sunday schools that later developed into two growing churches; Dr. Richard C. Halverson, pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church, Washington, D. C., executive director of International Christian Leadership, and one of the speakers at the World Congress on Evangelism in Berlin; the Rev. William E. Pannell, Negro evangelist and staff member of Youth for Christ, active in both Detroit and Chicago; and Charles Nagel, vice-president of Provident National Bank in Philadelphia and a member of the Board of Managers of the American Sunday-School Union. Editor Carl F. H. Henry, of CHRISTIANITY TODAY, was moderator. The National Broadcasting Company recently carried an abridgment of the comments on its Sunday-morning network program, “Faith in Action.”—ED.

Henry: Are there not many signs that for all its grand history, the Sunday school is now in trouble? In the past ten years book after book has appeared reassessing the educational program of the Christian churches, and many of these have been highly critical of the Sunday school. After 106 years of publication, the Sunday School Times has merged with another magazine. Isn’t the Sunday school in difficulty?

Halverson: A leading authority on church growth, Dr. Donald McGavran of California, has said that if just the children from its Sunday school were brought into church membership, one major denomination in America would enjoy a net gain of 700,000. When you compare this with that denomination’s actual net gain, which was 5,600 in one year, I think you begin to appreciate what the situation is. In Washington, D. C., the churches of one major denomination in one year averaged a decrease in attendance of 100 per Sunday school.

Pannell: I owe a great deal to the Sunday school. As a lad I was reached for Christ through the Sunday school, much through the kind of emphasis that we represent. Interested white friends in the neighborhood took me to Sunday school and introduced me to Jesus Christ, and here I am. I buy Sunday school—I believe in it! But any number of young people today, particularly in the teen years, think that Sunday school is kind of a Mickey Mouse.

Anderson: From the statistics given by Dr. Halverson, it seems clear to me that it would be very imprudent to ignore the danger signals surrounding the Sunday-school movement. On the other hand, I think I would answer the question, “Is the Sunday school a lost cause?,” with a ringing negative. It may well stand on the threshold of one of its more important and exciting and challenging eras of growth. Recently in a Law Day observance, the attorney general of the United States, Mr. Ramsey Clark, made the point that it is in youths between fifteen and sixteen that we have the largest group of law violators in the country today. He went on to say that it is absolutely imperative—indeed, I think he used the words “desperately necessary”—that we reach this group of young people. And if they’re going to be reached, the Sunday school is going to have to be one of those mechanisms, one of the instruments, with which we reach them.

Nagel: I think much depends on definition. What kind of Sunday schools do we have in mind? The question implies that there was a time when the Sunday school was not a lost cause, and that there has been a change. Has the method or has the approach changed in the Sunday schools now in trouble? Or have people changed, so that methods formerly effective are no longer effective?

Henry: Well, someone has said that if a few large publishing houses now discontinued Sunday school lessons based on the International Sunday School Lessons, the whole program of uniform lessons launched about a century ago would now collapse. Some predict that this whole International Sunday School Lesson cycle is already in its last seven-year span.

Nagel: That wouldn’t disturb me too much, Dr. Henry, so long as Sunday schools continue to be dedicated to the written Word of God and to the Living Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, in their method of reaching people. Regardless of lesson topics, I believe that the Sunday school will continue to be effective in the lives of these people.

Anderson: Even though I’ve expressed myself as believing that the Sunday school is far from a lost cause, I think we would be on dangerous ground indeed if we were to recommend against any change in the format of Sunday schools. The young people now growing up in this country (as the father of four children I think I have some knowledge of them) are a pretty sophisticated bunch. Because of the electronic communications media that we have today, because of a lot of other things, they are a lot more “savvy” than I was at the ages of nine, ten, twelve, and thirteen. We must very clearly realize the necessity, not of departing from the basic scriptural context of the Sunday school, but of using some new methods to bring Scripture to these young people.

Halverson: I think that any church administrator, or pastor, or Sunday-school superintendent, or director of Christian education, or Christian-education committee, that will really look at the Sunday school critically in terms of the challenge of the day will feel that there is tremendous opportunity—perhaps as much as ever. But our danger lies in the attitude that “we’ve always done it this way.” We get in a rut. I see absolutely no sense in the average “opening exercises” in the Sunday school today. They duplicate the worship service that takes place in the church, and nine times out of ten the Sunday-school superintendent or the department superintendent extends it twice as long as it’s supposed to go and the teacher doesn’t really have an opportunity to instruct. I wish we could abandon the opening exercises and get the children right into the classroom and into the Word, giving teachers an opportunity to relate to the students.

Anderson: We could pursue that point. Take an analogy from the federal government. Although we have been spending billions of dollars in this country for education at the state and local, and now the national, level, we discovered that only about 1 per cent of the money was going into educational research, into research on how to teach, on questions of methods and possible revisions of curricula. I think there is an important lesson here for the Sunday-school movement. As you say, just the fact we’ve always done things a particular way doesn’t mean that we should use the same methods to reach this very sophisticated age in which we live, even though our ultimate objective remains the same.

Pannell: I live in the inner city, whatever that means. I suppose it means I don’t live in the outer city. For us of color, it is extremely difficult to identify with the propaganda with which we are incessantly bombarded in the inner city, from whatever medium. It’s Caucasian, it’s middle-class, suburban. We have the same problem in our total educational system; some educators are beginning to grapple with it. And if the companies that provide this literature aren’t sharper—and that right soon—increasingly they’re going to find their printed matter irrelevant. You’ve got to find a way to find yourself. If you’re as conceited as I am, the first picture you look for in a piece of propaganda is your own. I don’t find myself visibly represented in this literature. Hence I have a tendency to “file” it. And if somebody “reaches me” at the right moment, I’m liable to fall for the rumor that whoever sells this stuff is selling it in the name of “the white man’s Christianity.”

Anderson: Mr. Pannell, criticism of the Sunday school has gone beyond religious periodicals; it’s in the popular press as well. One article I read made the point that the average teen-ager today would find it awfully difficult to find anything in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to enable him to meet the day-to-day problems of a teen-ager in 1967. Were you alluding to that or to something else in the comments you made?

Pannell: I wasn’t alluding to that. Although it’s not altogether improper, I don’t buy that. Jesus Christ is, as someone has suggested, history’s perpetual contemporary; there is no problem with that in my own mind. But in Chicago just the other day I talked to some young people coming from a high school, and I told the group that I was with Youth for Christ and that we work with teen-agers all around the world and all that stuff. One kid right behind me said, “Well, you can leave me out of that.” I said, “What’s the matter? You don’t understand, you don’t buy Jesus Christ?” He said, “Uh huh.” A kid over in the other corner of the car said, “Man, I do; I think he was a crazy cat.” Now, that was a bit shocking—I sense your reaction! But upon further questioning, the kid behind me admitted that his problem really wasn’t with Jesus Christ but with the fact that Jesus Christ gets lost in the machinery. Jesus Christ can get through if he’s presented properly, and he is contemporary. There’s no problem there. But we get the idea, you know, that Jesus Christ is Caucasian, that his headquarters are in Washington, that he was born in a log cabin on the hillsides of Georgia—and I’m not so sure you can substantiate that. He’s a total Christ for the total society.

Henry: For about twenty years the Sunday-school enrollment has been declining at the nine-to-eleven junior age level. But more recently, in some areas of the country there has been a noticeable decline in junior-high and senior-high groups, particularly since the Supreme Court ruling against prayers and Bible readings in the public schools. Now I’m not asking about the legality or illegality of the Supreme Court’s decision, but whether intentionally or unintentionally that ruling tended to downgrade the educational significance of the Christian religion in the eyes of the junior-high and senior-high students.

Halverson: I haven’t ever thought about that particular cause-and-effect relationship. I would be interested if somebody would test it. But my experience is that when Jesus Christ is presented as he really is in the New Testament, he appeals to youth—right across the board. One youth organization has as its slogan or theme, “It’s a sin to bore a kid with the Gospel.” And this doesn’t mean that they compromise the message in order to reach the kid. It means that they remove Christ from all the appendages that have been around him, that have caricatured him through the centuries, and let kids really see him. And the kids respond—not all, of course, but many find him very appealing.

Anderson: Dr. Halverson, what should be the educational philosophy of the Sunday school? Some people suggest that it ought to be a morning hour of social fellowship where we all get to know one another better. Back when I was attending Sunday school in the primary and secondary grades, it was pretty much the three R’s; you learned the books of the Bible, you learned various memory courses, and so on. But for the teen-ager in particular, should this be the approach today, or something else?

Halverson: It’s my observation that many evangelical Sunday schools don’t have what you might call a philosophy of Christian education. Now there are grand exceptions to this. But if you ask Sunday-school teachers, “What is your purpose?,” I think that they might respond by saying, “My purpose is to teach the Bible” or “My purpose is to win a soul to Christ,” or something like that. Some might even say, “My purpose is to get these children into the church.” I believe in the dissemination of a knowledge of the Bible, and I believe deeply in memorizing Scripture—as the Bible says—that we might not sin against God. But we must relate the purpose of Sunday school or Christian education to nurturing the child’s life in Christ through the Scriptures. It wasn’t accidental that Doctor Luke was led by the Spirit of God to record that Christ grew in wisdom (that’s intellectually) and in stature (that’s physically) and in favor with God (that’s spiritually) and man (that’s socially). In our Sunday schools we need to think of using the Scriptures to nurture the child in Christ so that he grows as a total person, rather than in just one area of his life.

Nagel: Well, I would like to comment on the effect of the Supreme Court decision on Sunday-school attendance, and on the importance of Scripture. When we consider the claims that the Bible makes for itself, when we consider what the Bible, the Word of God, has done in the lives of individuals, it stands to reason that if the reading of Scripture—even if not too carefully chosen—is discontinued in the public school, there will be an adverse effect. The Bible says of itself that “all scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works.” That covers not only the individual’s responsibility to be reconciled to God, but also his responsibility to demonstrate what God has done in his life, through works visible to those about him. I believe that the Sunday school must present that kind of message. The teacher of the class must demonstrate in his own life the dynamic power of this Bible, this Gospel he’s presenting. Where that is done, I believe the results will be pleasing not only to the Lord but also to the teacher.

Anderson: There is only one point at which I might take issue, Mr. Nagel. How can you do this? The average Sunday-school teacher has about twenty-nine minutes, I guess, to present the lesson, and unless he is an unusual teacher that’s the total amount of time that he spends with this particular class or this particular youngster during the week. How can he implant the Scripture in their hearts by his example?

Nagel: Well, I believe there are two things that the teacher should try to accomplish just as quickly as possible. One is to make very plain each person’s need for a saving relation with the Lord Jesus Christ. The other is to get the student to recognize the Bible as the answer to his problems, as a Book which has great power in itself and to which he can look with confidence. Now, if the teacher can demonstrate that he himself has found this to be the source of answers, and if he has the kind of life and testimony he should have, he will inspire confidence in the pupil that will prompt him to look to this Bible for answers to the problems that certainly are the same for him as for his grandfather. They might appear under different names or different definitions, but the root problems are the same, and the answers are there if one will seek them prayerfully.

Halverson: Mr. Nagel, you began by referring to the dynamic quality of the Bible itself, and I thought you were going to say if this Bible is just presented, that’s it! And then you began to speak about the demonstration—, or I’d like to use the word “incarnation,”—of this Word, in the life of the teacher and his relation to the pupils. This is something tremendously significant. There flashes into my mind Paul’s statement to the Thessalonians: “Our Gospel came to you not in word only.” I believe that a tremendous danger on the part of Sunday-school teachers—and I’m speaking now of those who really believe in the Bible as the infallible Word of God—is their feeling that they can just “lay it out there.” They take passages like God’s promise that “my word shall not return unto me void.” But we have Paul’s warning against representation in word only and not in the Spirit. What’s important is not just teaching the children the Bible but relating incarnate truth to the children in whatever I’m teaching day by day.

Pannell: I object to the term “Sunday school.” I wouldn’t die over it, but “Sunday school” to me is really a juvenile term. I even object to the word “missionary.” I’m extra-sensitive at this point. You’ll grant me that, won’t you? My ancestors come from all over; it’s obvious that I’ve been “tampered with.” My ancestors come from those places to which historically we have sent missionaries, and most of my life—whether for good or bad—I’ve tried to live that reputation down. Now some character comes down to me on 47th Street and introduces himself as a Sunday-school missionary. This bothers me a little bit. And, getting back to Dr. Henry’s question about the Supreme Court decision, I’m not so sure that our young people were tuned in on that decision and half as excited about it as the theologians, but I do think that it tended to reinforce the idea that there is a basic incompatibility between Christianity and real sharp thinking.

Henry: Well, if this is so, isn’t it incumbent upon the Sunday school (let’s retain the term for a moment; it has a noble ancestry) somehow to set sights on the very problems that secular education tends to pose for young persons of junior-high and senior-high age, and to make the correlation of Christian education with these problems as exciting as secular education? In other words, isn’t the Sunday school then faced with the dire necessity of a head-on collision with the problems that public education raises for this young person who is now tempted to regard Christianity as irrelevant? Shouldn’t the Sunday-school teacher preserve for students the same sense of excitement that his public-school teachers do?

Halverson: May I first say a word about Mr. Pannell’s remarks. I understand his feeling. But I think there is a temptation today to abandon good words because they’re not understood, instead of giving them content. I personally fight for keeping good words and making them meaningful. I know some words are lost, unfortunately, but I wouldn’t say that about the words he mentioned. “Mission,” for example, is a very relevant word in business today, and in government today, and in the military today. “Mission” is a tremendous word, and we ought to give it meaning. We haven’t lost that word. And even “evangelism” has come into its own in the non-sacred world today. In our Sunday school, though we’ve been using what we think is an excellent curriculum for our senior high, we have just realized that when they move from senior high into college, they aren’t really equipped to meet what they’re going to face during their freshman year. We have not prepared them to encounter a critical approach to the Scriptures, and when they discover another view about the Scriptures, they are completely unprepared to resist it. And so we’re now revising our senior-high curriculum so that when students leave the program they will really be prepared to meet the issues they will face as college freshmen, in their first year away from home.

Henry: What other changes are needed? In Atlanta, Georgia, the First Alliance Church, which has two morning services and a marvelous Sunday-school plant, has a dozen teachers in public elementary or high schools or on college faculties who also are Sunday-school teachers. These volunteers illustrate the importance of emphasizing continuity between general education and Christian commitment.

Anderson: I think we would be much the poorer if we ever wholly supplanted the voluntary or volunteer aspect of the Sunday school with pure professionalism on the same level that we expect it in the public schools or in our colleges and universities. Nevertheless, we ought to be constantly aware of the need for up-grading the standards of those who teach in our Sunday schools.

Nagel: The effectiveness of the ministry of the American Sunday-School Union, which has been volunteer-centered through force of necessity, has not been impaired in the least by this. We know that the born-again Christian who is called by the Lord to take a class, who believes what he is asked to teach, and who evidences that belief in daily actions and in his concern for pupils under his responsibility, can be effective. Over 7,300 professions of faith in Christ were reported by our 150 missionaries. But we thank God also for those who have had professional training as teachers and who share this burden to reach boys and girls, and men and women, for Jesus Christ.

Henry: In what conspicuous ways might a Sunday-school teacher differ from a secular teacher? Do the public schools show a growing reliance upon mechanical methods of teaching that tend to widen the gap between teacher and student, while Sunday schools preserve the possibility of a closer teacher-student relationship?

Halverson: Well, you’ve pushed a button with me. I think this is fundamental to an effective Sunday school, that the teacher relate to persons, and I consider this relationship with persons fundamental to effectiveness as a teacher. When Mark records that Jesus chose twelve to be with him, it seems to me that this little preposition with underscores the techniques of Jesus’ way with men. He was with them. So often in a Sunday-school classroom, I think, the children are little its, little objects, instead of persons with whom the teacher must relate. Relating means involving oneself with those children in the totality of their lives all through the week, instead of just unloading a lesson on them in that Sunday-school classroom and then letting them go.

Anderson: Don’t we have to recognize, though, that the work of the Sunday school must be pretty closely coordinated with that of the other departments and arms of the church? It would be fine to follow the students all through the week, but presumably in many churches either a chapter of the Boy Scouts or the Christian Service Brigade or various other types of youth organizations will take over for social occasions and other things young people like to do.

Nagel: I’d like to add a word about the difference between the secular school and the Sunday school, that makes possible an effective ministry with untrained or unprofessionally trained teachers. We get back again to the textbook, to the Word of God itself, to the dynamite or “power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.” We read in Acts 4:13, “Now when they [that is, the high priests, rulers, elders, and scribes] saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.” And when our teachers in Sunday schools have been with Jesus, and know him and love his Word, and love those for whom Christ died, then that love and concern and the power of the Holy Spirit will be manifested to the pupil and will be effective in his life.

Pannell: I would think, too, that the edge a Sunday-school teacher will have is crucial at this point. In so many areas the school and all that it is, and the faculty and all that it represents, are part of “the Establishment.” It’s the “enemy.” You go because you have to. If you belong to one of those inner-city traps, you’ve got to believe that it’s “nothing but bad news” in so many areas. The guy can’t possibly wait until the bell rings; neither can most of the teachers, I would assume. For instance, in Detroit last year some very sharp, sophisticated young Negro leaders closed down one of our major high schools and forced the resignation of the principal in a top-level confrontation with the entire school board. Now, they did this because there was an increasing awareness on the part of the sharper students in that school that they were getting at best a second-class kind of education. I assume that every one of those kids could also put his finger on second-class teachers. As Congressman Anderson has pointed out, they are sharp and sophisticated. Somehow or other, then, we have got to wrap this Word in far sharper, far more sophisticated flesh than we have ever known. It has to be intellectually acute. It also has to be emphatically tuned, so that, whatever else comes through, the kid says, “Man, I don’t always understand what the cat’s saying, but I dig that cat. I don’t know what there is about him; I don’t know what makes him tick! I don’t know what that book under his arm is, but I buy that guy.” In other words, we’ve got to demonstrate that what we’re teaching in the name of Scripture and Jesus Christ is not irrelevant to the kid’s total standard of excellence, that is not in any way minimized and does not jar or clash. What we’re talking about has relevance to the total person. To present the Gospel and the Scriptures is to enhance and to ennoble, in the total sense of that word. I think we’ve got to get that through. I am tremendously disturbed by the attitude of some groups, paricularly when they invade our particular end of the turf. They seem always to be headed down toward the lower class, to the kid down here who presumably “really needs Jesus,” the implication being that the sharper guys don’t.

Henry: There are other problems I’m sure we wish we had an opportunity to discuss. There are 90 million adults in the United States not registered in any type of Bible study—a larger unreached population than all other age groups combined. It’s a real question whether any Sunday school can carry on a fully vital program without adult participation. Then we may question whether Sunday schools are really preparing for the time—it may be only a decade away—when people with a four-day work week will be thinking in terms of a Friday-Saturday-Sunday holiday out of town. And is the Sunday school really thinking of itself as an operational base for a total education program that reaches round the week?

Halverson: I think of a Sunday-school teacher who has had a class of senior-high boys in a certain Sunday school over a period of years. Every fall they move into that class twenty-five or thirty strong; they dwindle down to two or three by spring. And somehow this teacher is insensitive to this. He is oblivious to the fact that he is losing twenty-five or thirty high school kids every year. They were there when he started teaching the class, and within a few weeks they lost their interest in Sunday school and didn’t come any more. I don’t know what happens in his mind, except that perhaps he blames the kids, instead of asking how the teacher is relating to them, handling the Scriptures, incarnating the Scriptures.

Anderson: When we started I said I felt that although the Sunday school faces many problems, it might well be on the threshold of a really challenging and exciting era. I would add just this. One of the groups in this country today that is attracting young people is called the New Left. Recently one of my constituents sent me a piece of literature from one of these groups. I was impressed that, in outlining their program, they promised three things to their youthful adherents. One was the maintaining of a vision. The second was a program relevant to the problems of young people. And third was a sense of the urgency of these problems. It seems to me that is a pretty good summary for the Sunday school as it faces the future.

Halverson: I don’t think you can exaggerate the importance of a pastor’s relation to the Sunday school. I think that far too many pastors abdicate this responsibility. They leave it with the Sunday-school superintendent or a director of Christian education. Assuming an involved pastor, dedicated teachers, the centrality of the Scriptures, I don’t think the Sunday school is through, if we honestly and constantly and critically evaluate what we’re doing in the Sunday school in order to be relevant, in order to upgrade what we’re doing constantly. I believe that there is a tremendous opportunity in the future, a sense in which the Sunday school has never had a greater opportunity to meet the need of the age.

Pannell: I’m hooked on the city. I’ve just rediscovered the city. My preference would be the green pastures and a lovely house with green shutters and all that. But God has laid on my heart the city, where so many things converge. I’m particularly concerned that we understand the urgency of that issue. The city is where evangelical Christianity may well face up to its Waterloo. The city is where democracy, perhaps the future of it in terms of its total application, may well be decided. We’re concerned about the integration of a man’s personality, and his total life. The city is where we must flesh out our words in a totally integrated thrust. Take the teen-ager. Statistics suggest that perhaps less than a fourth of the Negro teen-agers live with both their parents throughout their young teen lives. Now you just can’t say the Gospel is the total answer to that thing. Sooner or later, somewhere, we’ve got to make an impact upon this young fellow wherever it has to be made so that we communicate to him self-esteem, self-work, self-respect, total manhood. We can do this in the name of Jesus Christ, and it must be done, unless in the name of the Gospel we’re going simply to perpetuate a dismal social situation.

Nagel: The American Sunday-School Union in this anniversary year reaffirmed its commitment to three principles expressed by three verses of Scripture. The first is Second Timothy 4:2, “Preach the Word,” which is the power of God unto salvation. Second is Second Timothy 2:2, “And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.” And third, First Thessalonians 5:17, “Pray without ceasing,” recognizing that teacher and pupil must be the objects of the work of the Holy Spirit if anything of real consequence is to be accomplished in the life of either.

Henry: The Sunday school may have problems, but it does not have the problems that the pulpit has today. It doesn’t have the problems that the seminaries have today. It is really the twentieth century and the human race whose cause is lost. The Sunday school offers hope and light, and its light needs to be turned up so Jesus Christ and the Bible are kept at the center of human need. I think that’s the main thrust of this panel. Much about our age is drab and dismal, but the Sunday school, for all its faults, remains one hopeful beacon in the darkness of these times.

Secular Man?

He had been away from college for several years and had now come to the university to work on a Ph.D. in one of the social sciences. His hometown pastor had written me a brief note suggesting I call on him.

We arranged to have lunch in the cafeteria of his university residence hall. He greeted me amicably, and we went through the lunch line. We sat at a small corner table and proceeded almost directly to the matter at hand.

He related his early experience with the church. Typical. His mother had taught Sunday school for years. He was baptized as a young adolescent and held local and regional youth leadership positions. His undergraduate years were spent in the custodial care of an evangelical college. Then five years in the business world. A gradual drift away from religion. Now, no concern for the church. For several years he had been rather hostile toward Christianity; now he was just neutral.

He was matter-of-fact in saying he had outgrown the need for religion. He stated with some feeling, “I could never go back to what I had. No satisfaction. No freedom.” He went on, “Perhaps some day, when I’m about forty, I might work out a religious frame of reference, but I doubt it will ever happen. Right now I’m too busy sucking all of life in. There’s just too much to experience, and I’m hungry for a full life.”

As we rose from the table, I noticed that he had tasted each food but had finished only the cake. As we walked back to his room, he told me he had concluded that there was no synthesis for life. He had discovered that all that matters is that we play effectively our chosen role and do whatever is at hand with professional competence.

Back in his room I mentioned that I had not detected in his words any hint of his purpose for undertaking graduate study. I asked whether his decision was based partly on a desire to do something for others or make the world a bit better. He hadn’t any such idea, he said. He readily acknowledged that his life was self-centered and said he didn’t believe persons who say they are trying to invest their lives for the sake of others or for the sake of God. “They are hypocrites. All that matters is that we do our job well.” And, “Man is his own measure of all things.”

“Religion,” he reaffirmed, “is no longer personally relevant. It simply has no bearing on my life, nor, for that matter, on the lives of most people I know.” Then, after a reflective pause: “To be honest, I would have to say that rather than having actually outgrown the claims of Christ, I believe I make a more or less deliberate effort to ignore them.”

An awkward silence.

I suggested that we try to keep in touch and stood up as though to leave.

We shook hands.

I noticed that his hand was wet with perspiration. He noticed it too and quickly withdrew his hand. His eyes opened wide and his jaw dropped a bit. With a tone of surprise he blurted, “My God, my hands are wet.”

Silence.

“Yes, I noticed.”—Dr. JAMES W. DIDIER,University Baptist Chaplain, Michigan State University.

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