Category: Stanford/Ministry News

Freshman arrived on campus today, and so we were there as well. 

There’s an event sponsored by the Office for Religious Life called “Frosh & Faith.” It’s actually more for parents than for students. It happens within a few hours of parents bringing their children to campus and is meant to reassure them that there is at least a remnant of students who strive for righteousness. At least, that’s my take on it.

Anyway, we always set up a table there along with the other groups and try to meet freshmen like crazy.

Today the weather threw us a curveball. 

It rained.

In Palo Alto in September.

It rained.

I was stunned.

I was also dry, having had the foresight to bring a canopy. I was also soon alone, as all the other groups had neglected this crucial bit of preparation.

At first the other groups struggled through. We invited those at adjacent tables to shelter within our tent, leading to the never-before-heard statement from an ordained Assembly of God minister (moi) to an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister (Dean Scotty McLennan), “Come on in–the Assemblies of God tent is big enough for you.”

Heh. That made me happy.

By the end it was us and one or two other groups. Even the Office for Religious Life bailed.

A rather auspicious start to the school year–all the frosh have been baptized and now we just need to get them to show up.

A few months ago Elizabeth Svoboda emailed me to ask if she could come to a Chi Alpha function and interview a few of our students for an article she was writing about spirituality on the college campus. I said sure, she showed up, the party ended, and I didn’t hear anything else. I really didn’t think that much more about it.

So I was very pleasantly surprised this morning to learn that the article, School Spirit, has been printed in Science & Spirit magazine.

Overall I was quite pleased, although I feel compelled to clear one thing up. Elizabeth accurately quotes me as saying

Glen Davis, the leader of Stanford’s Chi Alpha Christian fellowship, has seen instructors go to extreme lengths to keep discussion of religion and morals out of the classroom. “One professor taught a class on [German theologian, writer, and central figure in the Protestant Church’s struggle against Nazism] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and she didn’t mention his spiritual beliefs at all,” he says. 

I’d just like to put that particular statement into context–I was praising the professor in question for changing her approach once she realized what she was doing. 

At least, that’s what I think I was doing. I didn’t take notes on my own words (which would be an odd habit to have).

Q: What are you doing?
A: Recording what I say for posterity. 

Anyway, I don’t recall everything that I said that night, but I’ve told that particular story on several occassions and I typically start with the fact that the professor initially skirted past Bonhoeffer’s beliefs and ultimately decided that she couldn’t keep doing that.

I just mention it on the .01% chance that professor happens
a) to read the article,
b) recognize that she is the anonymous professor in question,
c) and then comes to this website seeking an explanation for my apparently disparaging comment. 

Okay, on the .0001% chance.

Explanation: I was giving you props–really!

I met Lindsey this June while teaching at a conference in Springfield, MO. She was planning to go and work with Chi Alpha at UT Austin. The doors closed on her at the last minute and she was trying to figure out what to do.

Their loss is our gain, as she’s decided to come and work alongside Paula and I here at Stanford! Everyone who’s worked with her in the past has incredible things to say about her character and her competence. We’re very excited, and we can’t wait until she’s able to move down here from her Alaskan home.

There are still a few hurdles to be overcome (approval from various committees, raising her funding, etc), but we don’t foresee any problems. It will probably take about a year to get everything worked out, and then she’ll be joining us here on the Farm.

update: she’s launched her own website: Life With Lindsey.

I’m planning to take out some ads on TheFacebook.com and running them for one day each.

Here are the guidelines:

Your announcement may contain a title of up to 25 characters that links to another page, and a body of up to 150 characters. No HTML is allowed in either section.”

Title: Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship is too long.
Options: 

1. XA Christian Fellowship
2. Chi Alpha @ Stanford
3. Chi Alpha, Baby!
4. Got Faith?
5. Faith, Friends, Fun
6. T or F: God exists.
7. Dopeless Hope Fiends

Ideally, I’d like a funny one. A funny question would be best, I think. It’s hard to be funny in 25 characters or less. Each one would link to xaStanford.org.

As for text, here are some options I’m looking at:

1. Most of your textbooks will be out of print next year. Ours has been around for 2,000. It’s worth taking a look at. Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship
2. Attending Chi Alpha has just become a requirement for graduation! Would we lie to you? And is it lying if you expect not to be believed?
3. Is there a God? We like to think so–come find out why. Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship — Wed nights at 8pm in 300–300
4. No dues. No booze. Just Jesus. Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship — Wed nights at 8pm in 300–300
5. What does Satan call isolated Christians? Hors Doeuvres. Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship — Wed nights at 8pm in 300–300
6. Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship — Wed nights at 8pm in 300–300

Here’s the problem–I don’t really like any of them that much. I don’t hate them, exactly, they just don’t get me excited.

If you have any better ideas, leave them in the comments. I can use up to five.

David Gellertner has a great article in the Weekly Standard called Biblical Illiteracy in America. I liked the article well enough, but the last few paragraphs swept me off my feet:

My guess is that our next Great Awakening will begin among college students. College students today are (spiritually speaking) the driest timber I have ever come across. Mostly they know little or nothing about religion; little or nothing about Americanism. Mostly no one ever speaks to them about truth and beauty, or nobility or honor or greatness. They are empty–spiritually bone dry–because no one has ever bothered to give them anything spiritual that is worth having. Platitudes about diversity and tolerance and multiculturalism are thin gruel for intellectually growing young people.

Let the right person speak to them, and they will turn back to the Bible with an excitement and exhilaration that will shake the country. In reading the Bible they will feel as if they are going home–which is just what they will be doing. 

via GetReligion

I was reminded how much our ministry matters as I reflected on two very different events at Stanford: the Veritas Forum and a campus Playboy shoot. The two played out like a real-life version of truth or dare.

First, truth. We were delighted to co-sponsor The Veritas Forum at Stanford. We brought in leading Christian intellectuals such as Dallas Willard, Gary Habermas, and Michael Behe to engage students and faculty in discussions about life’s hardest questions and the relevance of Jesus Christ. It was incredible! The highlight for me was observing Christian philosopher Dallas Willard debate Richard Rorty, one of the most influential philosophers in America today. The whole week was a powerful reminder that the Christian faith is reasonable and worthy of careful investigation.

But we went from truth to dare as Playboy came to town and students disrobed to pose for the magazine’s annual college issue. The Stanford Daily urged readers to participate, saying that prejudice against pornography “is an unfortunate product of our society, and one that ought to be addressed.” The editorial went on to make the case that Playboy was a high-class, upstanding literary magazine. (source)

The difference between the two events was inadvertently summed up by a hopeful model. When asked by a local paper about some consequences of her decision to pose, she said, “I guess I hadn’t thought it out too thoroughly.” (source)

And so we’ll keep sponsoring events like the Veritas Forum, we’ll keep hosting Bible studies in the dorms, and we’ll keep talking about things like the reliability of the Bible, because today’s students desperately need to be challenged to think.

I stumbled across this guide to steam tunneling at Stanford.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the concept, steam tunneling is an old college pastime wherein students crawl around in the tunnels that run under campus.

I had two thoughts:
1) How cool.
2) I bet a large percentage of my male students have done this.

I am very confident of number two because I know have students who have nefariously rappelled down the side of buildings on campus. And that’s way less a part of the college tradition than exploring tunnels.

Andrew Wright, friend, fellow blogger, and student in Chi Alpha, refers to a positive impact I had on his life: 

[Tobias] Wolff destroyed any residual interest I still had in Ayn Rand and Objectivism, completing the process begun by a series [of] summer conversations with Glen in 2002.

I hoped I was making sense back then. That was really one of my first ministry challenges at Stanford. Andrew was our very first student in Chi Alpha (and he turned into our housemate within weeks of our arrival).

It’s bittersweet seeing him graduate in a few months. On the one hand, my job as a minister will be MUCH easier without Andrew ;), but on the other hand he’s our last link to the beginning. We will have officially cycled a student generation.

I was pretty heartened by his last paragaph:

Commencing the last quarter at Stanford – the last 3 months of indiscretion of my life, but to cram all of the fun and folly of the past 4 years into one quarter would probably kill me. Rather than resolving to live it up, I’m hoping to end on a note that is simultaneously reflective and forward looking, a sort of transcendent Buddha-like coasting into the next higher phase.

We’ll be watching, Andrew. 🙂

Creepy squared:

In one of the most controversial scientific projects ever conceived, a group of university researchers in California’s Silicon Valley is preparing to create a mouse whose brain will be composed entirely of human cells.

Researchers at Stanford University have already succeeded in breeding mice with brains that are one per cent human cells.

In the next stage they plan to use stem cells from aborted foetuses to create an animal whose brain cells are 100 per cent human. 

No, you did not misread. Stanford scientists are planning to make a mouse whose brain is composed of dead babies’ brain cells. 

Rats of Nimh, anyone?

full story (or read another, broader story on the same issue)

I somehow missed this article from the Stanford Daily a few weeks ago : Christian Groups Sue Universities Nationwide.

some Christian groups have been successful in forcing colleges to allow them to bar gay students and atheists.

That’s an awfully loaded interesting way to describe what’s been happening. It makes it sound as though the Christian groups are agitating for rights previously denied them instead of reacting to new university policies which undermine their beliefs. For a different take, read Christianity Today’s weblog (and this follow-up).

Junior Rosabelle Oribello, the LGBT [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered] Center’s liaison to on-campus residences, believes the current political atmosphere at Stanford will help prevent the outbreak of such a controversy.

“I don’t think it will happen at this campus because the message the center has gotten from the religious groups has been that they are pretty affirming of LGBTs,” she said. “Though I don’t know what it’s like on other college campuses, we have a pretty liberal campus and that goes far in reducing the chances of these kinds of conflicts.”

While many religious groups at Stanford clearly do affirm whatever sexual choices you make, many others do not. You would have no clue based on this article. That’s odd.

[Scotty] McLennan agreed with Oribello’s reasoning.

“Stanford is a very pluralistic environment, religious and in other ways,” he said.

Many students believe that it is this politically-homogeneous atmosphere that prevents the difficulties faced at other schools.

The contrast between one sentence and the next is striking: “pluralistic environment” switched to “politically homogeneous.” That it wasn’t caught by the reporter or the copyeditor is revealing–the pluralism that Stanford presupposes is a superficial pluralism which focuses on color, culture, and sexual conduct but which usually ignores convictions. In other words, ideological diversity is the one sort of diversity that is frowned upon.

On that note, I find it curious that the author apparently didn’t seek to interview anyone who disagreed with his presuppositions. Of the three religious groups he did interview, none had been involved in the lawsuits on other campuses. That’s worth noting simply because the article mentions InterVarsity at Tufts by name and there’s a very active InterVarsity chapter here on the Farm. I wonder what they would have said had they been asked?

If you’re interested in stuff like this, Andy Crouch has a great article called Campus Collisions that explains why InterVarsity, in particular, is more likely to get involved in lawsuits than the rest of us.