A distinguished Christian scholar wrestled with a conundrum of modern faith on the University of Wisconsin campus as part of the annual Geneva Forum lecture series. The question posed to Mark Noll, a professor of history at Notre Dame University and the author of The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind and other books, was “Christianity: Expanding Worldwide Yet Struggling in Universities. Why?”
As a historian of faith Noll acknowledged that Christianity indeed is thriving on a global basis, more so in the southern hemisphere than the north:
- Last Sunday there were more worshipers in church in China than in all the countries of Europe.
- The Anglicans in Africa outnumber British Anglicans and American Episcopalians combined.
- There are more active Catholics in the Philippines than in any European country.
Noll said that many positive signs of Christian vigor could be seen at universities and Christian scholarship was also doing well. “Notre Dame is seeing cooperation between Catholic and Protestant scholars that didn’t exist 50 years ago,” he said. “But Christian movements don’t set the agenda for universities.”
He listed four problems challenging modern Christianity on university campuses:
- Consumerism – a utilitarian view of education prevails, seeing it as a means to the end of economic success.
- Hedonism – immediate gratification has dominated society since the advent of television. Christianity in contrast calls for sacrifice.
- Multiculturalism – is an important concept but too often it undermines traditionalism when it exalts freedom without restraint.
- Naturalism – an ideology that rules out the divine. At the university naturalism is used to reject all non-empirical evidence.
Anyone looking for an easy answer to the question that was posed would have been disappointed.
“Christianity has not been silent but it has not countered these trends well,” said Noll. The modern world requires theologies of culture, labor, economics, the environment, and other disciplines. The university needs awareness of the essential place of God in the academic enterprise.
Part of the problem with the campus, Noll said, was the artificial division between the sacred and the secular. “The Christian Gospel holds the prospect of unity in diversity,” he said. That’s what the university is all about.
The lecture was sponsored by Geneva Campus Church, the UW Christian Faculty and Staff Fellowship, and InterVarsity Graduate Christian Fellowship.