By Tom Krattenmaker
The moment had, on the surface, a Nixon-goes-to-China quality.
Filmmaker Dan Merchant stood before an auditorium of students assembled for the first campus screening of his forthcoming movie, Lord Save Us From Your Followers. Merchant, a Christian, was at Lewis & Clark College, a school in Portland, Ore., deemed by the Princeton Review college guide to be one of the least religious in the USA.
Yet one conspicuous reality defied a key premise of the event from the moment the college chaplain brought Merchant to the stage: Students packed the good-sized hall, overflowing into the aisles and entry ways, for a chance to see what most knew was a Christian-themed movie with a Gospel message.
And by the time they had finished watching the film -- a humorous and heartfelt examination of the culture wars featuring a Michael Moore-meets-Monty Python style -- those students could not wait to talk to Merchant about his movie and his faith.
"What struck me," Merchant said later, "was their openness to this conversation."
Students open to a conversation about Christianity, even on a campus with an ultrasecular reputation? Such is the state of affairs at the nation's colleges and universities, where religion is experiencing something of a renaissance, although not necessarily in the shapes and forms older generations are used to seeing.
Read the rest of the article in USA Today.
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