{"id":41061,"date":"2015-10-01T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-10-01T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/harvard-debate-team-upset-by-surprise-contenders\/"},"modified":"2015-10-01T20:00:00","modified_gmt":"2015-10-01T20:00:00","slug":"harvard-debate-team-upset-by-surprise-contenders","status":"publish","type":"sermon-illustrations","link":"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/harvard-debate-team-upset-by-surprise-contenders\/","title":{"rendered":"Harvard Debate Team Upset by Surprise Contenders"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Months after winning a national title, Harvard&#39;s debate team faced their toughest opponent yet&mdash;a group of prison inmates from New York. An article in the British newspaper The Guardian reported: &quot;The showdown took place at the Eastern correctional facility in New York, a maximum-security prison where convicts can take courses taught by faculty from nearby Bard College, and where inmates have formed a popular debate club.<\/p>\n\n<p>Eastern invited the Ivy League undergraduates and this year&#39;s national debate champions over for a friendly competition. A three-judge panel concluded that the Bard team had raised strong arguments that the Harvard team had failed to consider and declared the team of inmates victorious.&quot; The Harvard team posted a note on their Facebook page graciously congratulating the inmates.<\/p>\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading is-style-article-subhead2\"><em><strong>Possible Preaching Angle:<\/strong><\/em><\/h2>\n\n<p><em>The prison team certainly isn&#39;t a stand-in for the church, but you have to love the way that God chooses the &quot;foolish things&quot; of this world to shame the wise. This story also shows why showing partiality () may lead to some wrong conclusions about who is up and who is down.<\/em><\/p>\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading is-style-article-subhead2\"> <\/h2>","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"template":"","tax_ctp_audience":[],"tax_ctp_authors":[],"tax_ctp_categories":[165],"tax_ctp_format":[171],"tax_ctp_illustration_types":[411],"tax_ctp_multimedia":[],"tax_ctp_point_editor":[],"tax_publications":[140],"tax_ctp_tags":[3976,4089,4546,4671,4710,5265],"tax_ctp_topics":[395],"class_list":["post-41061","sermon-illustrations","type-sermon-illustrations","status-publish","hentry","tax_publications-ct-pastors","tax_ctp_tags-fear","tax_ctp_tags-grace-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-news-that-illustrates","tax_ctp_tags-power-of-god","tax_ctp_tags-prisoners","tax_ctp_tags-weakness"],"acf":{"scripture_references":[{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null},{"first_verse":null,"add_second_verse":false,"second_verse":null}]},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Harvard Debate Team Upset by Surprise Contenders - CT Pastors<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/pastors\/preaching\/sermon-illustrations\/harvard-debate-team-upset-by-surprise-contenders\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Harvard Debate Team Upset by Surprise Contenders - CT Pastors\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Months after winning a national title, Harvard&#039;s debate team faced their toughest opponent yet&mdash;a group of prison inmates from New York. 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