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.