Mentoring

Mike Licona on the hostility to evangelical Christians on campus

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From Baptist Press. (H/T Mary)

Excerpt:

Did their youth pastors drop the ball on preparing them adequately to withstand the attacks on their faith they would experience when they went off to college? Yes. But the buck stops with Dad. I failed and I admit I’m embarrassed because, of all people, the children of an apologist should know the evidence.

Let’s take a moment and look at the situation in which our children find themselves. This will help us to see why it’s important to equip them with both evidences and answers to the difficult questions. University campuses are growing increasingly hostile toward evangelical students. A 2007 report by two Jewish researchers found a strong bias against evangelical students at secular universities.[1] More than 1,200 faculty members from 712 colleges and universities were interviewed pertaining to their feelings toward various religious followers. The results were alarming. Three percent of American faculty members admitted having negative or unfavorable feelings toward Jews while 33 percent admitted having them toward Muslims. But 53 percent admitted having negative or unfavorable feelings toward evangelical Christians. The researchers concluded, “Conservative Christians have for some time been concerned about their children’s campus environment. These data certainly legitimize their concerns.”

But it didn’t stop there. To their shock, these Jewish researches likewise discovered that a significant number of American faculty members want Muslims to play a greater role in the American political process while wanting evangelicals to stay out of it. But why? After all, generally speaking, most Muslims are pro-life, against homosexual marriage and women’s rights, at least as they are enjoyed by American women. To me, this suggests we are in much more than a cultural war between political conservatives and liberals. It goes beyond secularism and the religious. On many of our college campuses, it is a war against evangelical Christianity.

I personally have had numerous students from all over North America inform me that professors, on the first day of class, said their objective was to rid Christian students of their faith by the end of the semester. That’s right. The professor openly stated in class that his or her objective was to rid Christian students of their faith within the next hundred days. Can you imagine what would happen if those same professors had instead asked how many of his or her students were Muslims … or Jews? They would have been labeled “Islamaphobe” or “anti-Semite” and would soon have joined a number of others in the job market. But faculty members often get a pass if they’re a “Christophobe.”

I’ve been fussing a lot lately about making good decisions about sex before marriage, and the importance of children growing up with two biological parents. But another thing to prepare for is what happens when your children get into the schools. If you just abandon them to be influenced by their peers, by the culture, and by liberal educators, then you can’t expect your children to have an accurate worldview. Very rarely will you find that their peers, their pop culture influences, and their educators, have any sort of knowledge about what the Christian worldview really says, what the evidence is for it, and what the defenses are to arguments and evidence against it. You have to take the initiative to know this stuff. And if you aren’t married yet, then you need to be picking someone who has looked into the arguments and evidence for the Christian worldview. Economics, social science, education, marriage, parenting are all important things to study, but people already know a lot about that just by being aware of politics and such. That stuff is on the bottom shelf – apologetics is on the top shelf. You have to reach up high to get it – not everyone has it. And you can’t outsource it, either. You have to know it yourself.

What does the Bible say in the shema? (Deuteronomy 6:4-9)

4 Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one.

5 Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.

6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts.

7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.

9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

If you want an example of how far teachers will go to indoctrinate your children in university, check out this story from Neil Simpson. His daughter got a homework assignment that was designed to cause her to think that heterosexuality was ABNORMAL. Basically, it was a questionnaire with a lot of ridiculously offensive questions. She was supposed to give it to someone to fill out, so she gave it to her Dad. But her Dad is Neil Simpson – apologetics blogger and super-Dad. He’s posted the questions with his answers, as well as the outcome of the story. It’s worth reading if you want to see a good example of parenting.

15 thoughts on “Mike Licona on the hostility to evangelical Christians on campus”

  2. WK,
    This is a great point. I had the exciting chance to meet with 30 students from the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics last week, a very prestigious boarding school near our church. I taught a 2-hour “Apologetics Boot Camp” desiged to “prepare them to enter a college/work environment potentially hostile to their faith.” It was fantastic and I wish I could give the same talk to every graduating high school senior in the U.S.

    Apart from the basic apologetic arguments I laid out, my key point was: “There are answers out there.” I think that too many Christians students are unprepared and are blindsided when anyone challenges their faith. Giving them even a two-hour introduction helps them to see that there are good answers to tough questions and I hope it will prepare them.
    If anyone is interested, I posted my 6-page handout here:
    http://www.shenvi.org/Notes/Notes.htm
    See “Apologetics Boot Camp”
    -Neil

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      1. Thanks! By the way, as I mentioned to the students, because of time constraints I did not give any arguments for God’s existence but only for Christianity in particular. I briefly mentioned arguments from natural theology in a different talk I gave. See
        “Evangelism/Apologetics notes” or my Sunday school course notes on Apologetics based on Tim Keller’s Reason for God if you’re interested.
        -Neil

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  3. I was really shocked when I read the article. Mike Licona is one of the great resurrection researchers out there right now. He is head of the Baptist apologetics mission board. And he thought he would leave his children’s apologetics education up to his youth minister(s)! Worse, how could he not know that the youth minister can only do so much. The deep ingraining of faith comes from the parents. This was reinforced by what Tory Ninja earlier posted on your blog. Without the parents, what the youth minister does may not have much of an effect.

    This also brought to mind another idea. If dropping off kids at daycare when they are young is not desirable, it seems to me that there is an analogy when kids get older. It is dropping your teens off at youth ministry and hoping for the best.

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  4. I had a professor, in a philosophy of science class tell the class, that said anyone who thought God created the world could not earn an A in his class!

    It was an curious class to be sure. Folks were positing that aliens HAD to be true because of the careful patterns of crop-circles! But when I asked them about the inherent design we see in creation–it was brushed off as if the design we see in the universe is nothing… at least compared to the crop-circles!
    ~BW

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  5. Thanks for the link! This is such a huge issue. We really need to prepare our kids for these attacks. Too many people leave it to the youth groups, which are typically too busy entertaining kids to teach them the Bible and apologetics.

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  6. P.S. To brag on my daughter, she still prays for this professor even though she was endlessly irritated by her antics. My daughter knows that the teacher is spiritually blind.

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  7. Permit me to add to this – I had the most interesting meeting with a young couple that was recently married ( both were young 20’s). Here is a little bit about them both:

    Him- raised in non Christian home, parents divorced when he was 13. Education Level – High School.
    Her – Raised in a Christian home, dad was a pastor, parents divorced when she was 2. Education level – Masters

    What I found FASCINATING – she was questioning the validity of the bible ( ie the book of Job to be specific ) despite her upbringing and education. It would appear that her level of education far exceeded her knowledge of the bible ( I communicated Jobs loss in todays terms – loss of income/house, loss of family, loss of health and the significance of having a good response when “life happens” and how Job found God in the trials vs. blaming people and circumstances. The uneducated young hubby really appreciated the insight however the highly educated young wifey didn’t.

    What I dont understand – is HOW can a pastors daughter NOT get bible basics 101 and go further into deception despite a higher education ?

    While Christian outreach / education is important on the campus – if the core values are not installed at “ground zero/family level” , then there are very few if any who will not be influenced by secular education and public media.

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