Calvin University's official student newspaper since 1907

Calvin University Chimes

Since 1907
Calvin University's official student newspaper since 1907

Calvin University Chimes

Calvin University's official student newspaper since 1907

Calvin University Chimes

Student-led science and religion forum looks to open dialogue

A recent study conducted by the Pew Research Center found that atheists, agnostics, Jews and Mormons outperform the majority of American Protestants’ knowledge regarding the core teachings and history of the Christian faith. Not only that, but 60 percent of youth have left their churches as young adults, and the majority of them join the ranks of “nones” — those adhering to no faith whatsoever. Another study shows that 75 percent of evangelicals that go off to secular post-secondary education leave the faith and cite their number one reason as with issues of faith and science. Though science seems to be “the last straw” for so many young people who grew up in the church, Calvin professor Todd Cioffi and junior Hannah Biggs investigate the question further in this month’s “Banner” for further insight on why it might be so easy for millennials to leave the church. In any event, the question for Christian millennials still arises: What do we do?

Regarding the issues surrounding faith and science, a couple of students and interested faculty on campus, through funding from the Templeton Foundation, are starting an organization named Science and Religion Forum to engage with our community better regarding this issue facing the church in North America. They’ll be focusing their efforts in three main areas: first, SCAR is creating itself to be a space where Calvin’s community can gather and discuss these issues and, primarily, become the community of people that can even have these conversations well. Our campus is full of students coming from a variety of theological backgrounds regarding this topic. This can be cause for conflict, though SCAR hopes to create a  space where  conflict can be a catalyst for further unity and diversity in our Christian witness.

Second, SCAR will be organizing faith-formation discussion groups whose aim is to enable participants to be able to wrestle with their faith well specifically regarding these issues. They will be asking questions pertaining to things like fear and mystery, such as: How come fear seems to be driving our reasons for engaging this topic, and how might we change that? Or other tendencies among Christians, as popular speaker Rob Bell puts it, God is like an Oldsmobile, who, if we don’t essentially “catch Him up with the times,” he will be left in the past. But not only these questions, they’ll  be asking questions about knowing God. SCAR hopes to combat “Moralistic Therapeutic Deism,” which is the running notion among many evangelical youth in North America that essentially states: a god exists who wants you to be a nice person and will help you when you are in need if you call on him to do so.

Finally, SCAR hopes to be a resource of knowledge in both leading and surrounding work on this topic by creating a resource center of books, articles, websites, etc. that are accessible to the whole Calvin community. The other major way they hope to do this is by bringing to campus individuals and organizations who are at the forefront of engaging this topic well.

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