Evangelical College Students: An Opinion Sampler

Turbulence is no stranger to the Christian campus, but the intensity varies from year to year, as do the issues. Although evangelical colleges have been spared the embarrassment of open student rebellions, the more subdued forms of dissent have been plentiful. Some of the dissent is mature. Some is not. Be that as it may, CHRISTIANITY TODAYfeels that responsible student spokesmen deserve a wider hearing among church leaders as well as among rank-and-file churchgoers. We present a selection of editorial comment—on a variety of topics—from evangelical college newspapers published during the current academic year.

From The Oracle, Oral Roberts University, Tulsa, Oklahoma:

Militancy is essentially unknown at ORU. Riots, demonstrations, and the marks of unseemly mass behavior simply do not exist. We proceed in an undeniably orderly fashion, pacified if not peaceful.

Our purpose is not to condemn this prevailing air of calm. Assuming the proper role of the University to be teaching and inquiry, reason and rationale, the proper atmosphere of the university should be an atmosphere conducive to quiet reflection, and intensive and extensive study. Our question: is our pacified campus used for this active pursuit of wisdom? Or are we employing peace as a facade to mask an intellectual void and a dearth of problem-solving creativity? What do we do in our state of peace?

Demonstrations, whether in a peaceful or militant context, tend to rely on two initial and subsequent states for their manifestation. First: problem awareness—essentially a process of education, also implying the formulation of attitude and opinion. Second: conviction and a motivation—reflecting just “how much” we believe what we believe. The progression may be expressed as “know, believe, show.”

The conflict comes in the methodology we employ in demonstrating our convictions. The activities of many of our academic brothers would seem to tell us that burning buildings, shouting obscenities and half-formed, half-proved theories, and usurping temporary authority results in studies by Presidential commissions, chaos, tragedy, and very little more. But, what do we have to show for our peacefulness?…

Unfortunately, learning and thinking do not always proceed concurrently. It takes extra energy to become aware, even more energy to act. As an individual, do you have a well-formed opinion as to the whys, wherefores and solutions for Viet Nam, environmental control, racial tension? If not, why not?… Is peace your condition, or your alibi?

Heaven forbid that our pacified campus might be a grave.

From Weather Vane, Eastern Mennonite College, Harrisonburg, Virginia:

Western culture has developed a terrible compulsion—an affliction which compels us to try to institutionalize nature. We don’t just admire a flower in its natural state, we pick it and take it home so everyone can see the beautiful wilted flower.

We don’t sneak up on deer and try to capture their beauty and grace by taking pictures, we sneak up on them and shoot them. Then we cut off their heads and mount them on our walls so everyone can admire the superiority of our guns over the deer’s quickness.

The proposal to build a prayer chapel on the hill behind the administration building is another manifestation of our compulsion to defile.

The hill has always been one of the most sacred spots on campus. Innumerable prayers have been offered while gazing over the panorama offered by that vantage point.… So along comes Western man and says we have to put four walls and a roof up there so we can pray without getting grass stains on our suits.

The Harman Foundation undoubtedly had good intentions in offering the gift. The administration can’t be blamed for accepting the gift. Forty-five thousand dollars is a lot of money—particularly in these days when the economy and therefore gift givers are acting rather anemic. Maybe an argument could even be made that the college needs a prayer chapel more than anything else.

But the college does not need to build a prayer chapel on the hill thereby ruining the chapel God has already built. Not even a rustic prayer chapel. Not even a $45,000 rustic prayer chapel.

If a prayer chapel must be built, let it be built on some vacant land in a less sacred spot.

Better yet, why not let the EMC students do their praying in their hearts and use the money to answer some prayers. The Black Scholarship Fund would look a lot better with a $45,000 transfusion. There are people in Pakistan, in Chicago and even in Virginia who would certainly be glad to have nourishing food.

Is it really necessary to defile our hill?

From The Tartan, Gordon College, Wenham, Massachusetts:

Just when winter slump starts to set in, and alleged conspiracies and “general escalations” send nihilistic shivers up and down our spines, something good happens like the election of Michael Harrington to a seat on the House Armed Services Committee.

Harrington, of course, is our own representative to the House in Washington. The Armed Services Committee, of course, is the committee that molds and passes recommendations on the Defense Department budget. The combination of the two, Harrington and the Armed Services Committee, just about destroys our faith in the total depravity of the House.

Harrington went to Washington vowing to do all he could to subvert the seniority system which renders new congressmen powerless for their first four or five terms. On top of this, Harrington entered as a vociferous dove and established himself in opposition to old political politics.

This kind of stance for a new representative wasn’t expected to win all kinds of friends for Harrington among the Geritol crowd which holds power in the House. When he spoke at Gordon last term, Harrington said that his most effective role as a representative would be outside the House, helping new-style politicians get elected and educating the people to the reform needed in the House and in policy-making sectors of the government. With his election, Harrington will have a direct voice on allocations of defense funds.

Harrington’s victory is encouraging also because he apparently defeated an organized opposition. His chief opponent for the seat was Louise Day Hicks, a symbol of conservatism, although much of the pressure against Harrington came from higher places.…

He was elected despite this pressure. His response was characteristic, promising to push toward a reordering of priorities in the defense budget.

Which is exactly what we need.

From The Wheaton Record, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois:

Thursday evening, January 21, interested people from Wheaton and surrounding communities were privileged to hear Dr. George Wald, eminent Harvard biology professor and Nobel Laureate, lecture in Edman Chapel.… In short order, Wald not only rejected any supernatural but quickly went on to develop a clearly materialistic philosophy that held that man was merely a collection of atoms and that such “human” characteristics as fatherly concern were solely a result of the organization of these atoms.…

He accepts the entire evolutionary bag, from the initial plasma cloud, through the chance synthesis of organic (carbon chain) compounds, to man. He then applies the same principles of natural selection to the social order, claiming that democracy is the height of the process, the ultimate form of government.

And yet rather than let evolution take its course Wald hopes to arouse public action to oppose those very forces of natural selection he affirms. To applaud the natural selection process in the social sphere and in the same breath to lament the plight of the “little man” at the hands of the gigantic corporations basking in their evolutionary “fitness” seems to me inconsistent.

However, this inconsistency seems to me not nearly so grave as the problems of value that Wald seems to create for himself. What does Wald do when faced with someone who does not share Wald’s concern for pollution, but rather by virtue of the organization of his atoms has a deep concern for himself?

Perhaps this man is organized selfishly, perhaps he wants to pollute. Is the organization of Wald’s atoms right and those of his adversary wrong? And who decides this kind of question? Without an external moral standard Wald seems caught in the inconsistency of making seemingly objective statements of value like “the whole noble human enterprise.”

Doubtless Wald has a concern for humanity, shown perhaps most vividly in his abhorrence of the possibility of nuclear suicide. Yet, as he spoke of how terrible that would be, I tried to put myself in his philosophical shoes, so to speak. As I sat in my seat with visions of the earth as one gigantic glowing cinder, I remarked to myself, perhaps a trifle bitterly, “What would be so bad about that? The atoms could always reorganize.”

From Chimes, Calvin College, Grand Rapids, Michigan:

Last Monday night the faculty approved a Student Religious Activities Committee proposal which calls for the suspension of the current regulations imposing regular chapel attendance on students and sets forth a number of avenues for encouraging “lively, significant, and well-attended chapels on campus,” attendance of which is a matter of individual responsibility.

The faculty refused to name their plan “voluntary” chapel because they felt that “voluntary” implied a take-it-or-leave-it attitude which failed to reflect the necessity for communal worship in the institutional life of a Christian academic community. Nevertheless, according to the most commonly understood meaning of the term, Calvin College is about to establish a system of voluntary chapel which acknowledges that the college, by definition, requires the explicit worship of God in addition to the implicit worship carried on in the classroom, library, and coffee shop, a system which demands the active support of everyone who claims to belong to this community, but a system which places the decision of whether to attend a specific service and which service to attend completely in the province of individual responsibility. No more Polaroids, warning letters from the chaplain, six-skips-and-you’re-out.

The faculty’s action is the culmination of years of persuasion and pressure by multitudes of people. But finally reason and trust have won out; finally a majority of the faculty have become convinced that students possess “a reasonable degree of Christian commitment and maturity.” The despair and disillusionment which were created almost every year when the issue of “compulsory chapel” was raised—almost every year in recent memory, that is—are forever dispelled now that the faculty has agreed that willing worship is more likely to engender “a higher degree of spirituality” than forced worship.

But the quest for a vibrant program of significant, voluntarily-joined worship services is only half finished. The burden of responsibility for establishing a new tradition of voluntary chapel now passes to the student body, who must respond to the challenge of the faculty by manifesting a commitment to the communal worship of God [unnecessary] under the old system.…

From The Houghton Star, Houghton College, Houghton, New York:

Because of the rejection of the Christian presuppositions, the most challenging task facing the Church of Jesus Christ is the redefining and reinstatement of the Christian world view as a viable intellectual alternative to modern secular society. The Christian educational institution must bear the responsibility of that task. Such a responsibility demands that the Christian college or university move out of its higher level Sunday school syndrome into an intellectual community dedicated to the investigation of the philosophical content of Christianity found in both Holy Scriptures and doctrines of the historical Church. Our concern should not be with relating Christianity to a particular discipline but rather formulating and developing disciplines which are based upon the Christian presuppositions. For example, psychologists who are Christians should not be concerned with relating psychology to Christianity, but rather developing a Christian psychology which is one discipline within the perspective of the Christian world view.…

The student must endeavor to fully understand to the best of his ability the Christian philosophy. He must abandon any view that he previously had of faith as a non-intellectual subject and discipline himself to the serious study of the intellectual content of the Christian faith. The student must follow this path or cease to call himself a student. The Christian college is not a state college, and the difference does not lie in the fact that we have stricter rules or longer skirts but rather in the basic Christian philosophy to which we adhere. Any student who cannot commit himself to the intellectual investigation of the Christian faith within his areas of study has no place in this academic community.

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