Emerging Voices

Helping College Students Reclaim Christian Proclamation

Barry L. Saylor

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781725263680
  9781725263611
• eBook ISBN:
  9781725263628
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Higher Education

Recent research has demonstrated a loss of verbalization, or grasp of the Christian language, in the emerging generations of Western Christianity. As contemporary culture rejects Christian identity more and more, subsequent generations are losing the ability to proclaim their faith well. This is particularly troubling for those on the theological campus seeking to train and disciple today's emerging adults as the next generation of ministers. Emerging Voices attempts to identify factors behind this phenomenon and to map out a better way forward, particularly for the theological campus. As contemporary issues such as the elimination of faith from public discourse and the ubiquitous influence of technology shape students in the years before college, what can be done to reclaim the Christian language for students tasked with preaching the gospel? This project combines a deep dive into some of the leading research regarding religion and spirituality in youth and emerging adulthood, alongside of a focused study group. In uniting these approaches, Emerging Voices attempts to give expression to those who most need to be heard in the coming decades of the Christian church in Western culture.

1

It’s Time to Talk About Talking About Faith

In the Prologue to Scholarship & Christian Faith: Enlarging the Conversation, Rodney J. Sawatsky, former president of Messiah College, makes the statement, “Scholarship at its best is much more than the pursuit of truth: it is the quest for wisdom.”11 Although most in academia would agree with this statement, sociological research seems to indicate that something is amiss.12 In my opinion, the contemporary worldview of American culture has inhibited this “quest for wisdom” especially in its devaluation of faith. This statement will be supported later as two major areas of influence in American culture are examined, specifically their effect on faith language. Our pursuit is to identify the theological campus’ role in reclaiming the quest for wisdom, especially in reclaiming the Christian language in the preparation of young ministers. Specifically, this project will seek what the theological campus can do to reclaim the language which is at the core of one’s Christian identity.13 With this in mind, we will attempt to measure the impact of American culture, how this has affected college students in theological institutions as they enter their studies and the role of the theological campus in reclaiming such an identity, specifically through a reclamation of the faith language.

The Underlying Question

There is an underlying question that lies behind this project. How does interaction among students, faculty, and staff on a theological campus affect students’ ability to develop an aptitude to verbalize their faith? This question will first be informed by an extensive literature review, specifically focusing on the effect of contemporary culture. I will then propose a communal response on the theological campus which will seek to facilitate student growth in the area of faith proclamation. After reviewing the literature in these areas, I will present an empirical study from my doctoral research done on the campus of Trinity Bible College and Graduate School (TBCGS), where I serve as a professor.

Setting the GPS Coordinates

First, it is important to understand the effects of twenty-first-century culture on the average Christian student entering college. Nancy Pearcey, former Francis A. Schaeffer Scholar at the World Journalism Institute, notes the dichotomization of social life in the secular thinking of Western cultures such as the United States, which has effectively eliminated biblical wisdom from the equation.14 Whether one considers this through the lens of Peter Berger’s private versus public sphere15 or Francis Schaeffer’s upper and lower story,16 religion has been relegated to a discussion of values or preferences rather than considered alongside areas of scientific knowledge.17 Studies such as the National Study of Youth and Religion (NSYR) and Jeffrey Jensen Arnett’s examination of emerging adulthood demonstrate that the disconnect of faith is taking a toll on today’s college-age young person,18 providing tangible evidence that this marginalization has been detrimental.

Specifically, this study seeks to examine the loss of an ability to proclaim one’s faith, a concern noted by researchers in the landmark NSYR. After interviewing over three thousand young people for this study, Christian Smith and his research team found the majority of young people to be “incredibly inarticulate” when it came to discussing their faith, religious beliefs and practices, and the meaning of these in their lives.19 Many, when questioned on other matters, offered articulate and reasoned responses, while their answers to faith questions left them stuttering, stammering and offering non-statements regarding their faith. Smith said that it seemed that for many of the young people interviewed these were “the first time that any adult had ever asked them what they believed and how it mattered in their life.”20 Researchers concluded that these young people, who had displayed the ability to be quite conversant and coherent when speaking of issues such as the dangers of drug abuse and sexually transmitted diseases, had done so because they had been educated and had been challenged to converse in these areas, while religion seems to have never been addressed in this manner.

Smith proposes that young people might be much more conversant when it comes to their faith if they were simply taught the language.21 Recognizing the divide that secularism has created between the public and the private sphere and in relegating religion to nothing more than a subjective discussion of personal values, this concern is more readily understandable. The areas in which students were conversant were areas more commonly recognized as scientific knowledge, as rational and verifiable information and identified as objectively important for young people to understand.22 Knowledge of one’s faith, however, has been relegated to the private sphere, as non-rational and non-cognitive preference rather than truth, making one’s faith subjective and relative to particular faith groups.23

It is also notable that technology has greatly influenced communication in the contemporary age. This is not only apparent in the practical application of technology, but also in how these new tools have affected emerging adults both internally and externally.

Our first goal, then, will be to identify the influence that these cultural factors have had on the average incoming theological college student and their ability to verbalize their faith.

Secondly, we will seek to identify the role of the theological college in reclaiming the language of faith. Theological colleges seek to reverse the trends of studies like the NSYR by instilling language as a key characteristic of Christian identity in one’s preparation for their vocational calling. Such development of a Christian language is recognized not only as an academic exercise, but as a factor in building Christian culture rathe...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: It’s Time to Talk About Talking About Faith
• Chapter 2: Secularism and the Twenty-First-Century Emerging Adult
• Chapter 3: A Collegial Response
• Chapter 4: Screens Disciple
• Chapter 5: An Analog Response
• Chapter 6: Exiles in Training
• Chapter 7: Interview Methodology
• Chapter 8: In Their Own Words
• Chapter 9: Keep the Conversation Going
• Bibliography