Editorials & Commentary

Is God silenced on college campuses?

by Tom Krattenmaker
Tom Krattenmaker is Associate Vice President for Public Affairs at Lewis & Clark College and a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors, Lewis & Clark College

Or is the conversation simply changing?

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.

 

Contact Information

This article was originally published by Lewis & Clark College on March 31, 2008.

For more information about this piece, contact the publisher via e-mail.