…a good illustration of what many fundamentalists think happens to young Christians who go off to “dangerous” non-Christian schools...
I keep meeting more and more pastors with the same story. It goes something like this:
-Narrow, fundamentalist upringing
-Little exposure to the outside world and/or culture(s)
-Strongly defensive of values received from family of origin and/or church community
-Goes off to college or seminary, and gets “the speech”…
Here is “the speech”:
“You gotta watch out. Don’t go off to school and let these liberal professors question your faith. They are all just a bunch of atheists, and they’ll try to make you doubt the Lord. Remember what WE taught you and hold fast. Don’t let them take your Jesus!” (1)
I think speeches like this precipitate a lot of young people going off to fundamentalist-oriented colleges and seminaries instead of risking exposure to ideas and people different than those with whom they are raised. Not that I see no value in Christian education. I am the product of a great deal of such (pricey) education.
For me, the scary thought is being born into, raised, and educated solely within a fundamentalist environment. I have dear friends – great people – who spent all of their childhood and adolescence within a fundamentalist Baptist milieu and then went off to a college that would do nothing but reinforce all of their stereotypes. I find this sad.
As for education “taking your Jesus”…well, there is probably an element of truth to that. I think it is a vastly overblown narrative in evangelical circles, but there is a kernel of real experience there. Many secular departments of religion are filled with people for whom Christianity is a mere intellectual excercise, a field of study devoid of personal content or value. Or, even worse, you find people like Bart Ehrman: ex-fundamentalists who seem to relish challenging the fragile worldviews of undergrads who strongly believe in a faith that they do not know is a house of cards. This is the equivalent of Dan Gable wrestling 8th-graders.
Consider this an extension of my previous piece on picking a seminary: a Christian environment is a good thing, if done well. By ‘well’, we mean Christian in the CS Lewis sense: “mere” Christianity. Christianity defined broadly, orthodox and ecumenical, in touch with the deepest streams of the Church tradition and yet interested in living out that tradition in the present. Such a place will not “take your Jesus,” but it should enliven your faith, deepen it, and broaden. Challenge it? Yes, but in the sense of “iron sharpening iron.” No faith is true unless tested and refined. ‘
The difference between a Bart Ehrman doing that and a Christian mentor doing so is analogous to the difference between a stabbing and a surgery: one uses a knife, the other a scalpel. One’s intent is to destroy, the other is to help. It makes all the difference in the world. I am continually thankful to my own mentors who guided me, sometimes kicking and screaming, from fundamentalism to Christianity.
1. Adapted from a version of “the speech” that I received from various folks upon learning that I was going to seminary at Duke. None of them, of course, had the theological acumen to realize the irony of this. Now I can go back and tell them, proudly, “I am so anti-liberal that I am postliberal!” Of course, this is funny only to a bookish elite. Props to George Lindbeck!
Uniting Grace 