Chi Alpha @ Stanford

I just fin­ished a fas­ci­nat­ing col­lec­tion of essays com­piled by Os Gui­ness called The Great Exper­i­ment: Faith and Free­dom in Amer­ica. The “Great Exper­i­ment” of the title is Amer­ica itself: a nation with­out prece­dent in its treat­ment of faith.

It made me think deeply. It avoids either of the extreme posi­tions often taken by con­tem­po­rary authors (that the found­ing fathers barely tol­er­ated reli­gion or that they were all Bible-thumping fun­da­men­tal­ists) in favor of a more intel­li­gent view.

The the­sis through­out the book is that faith and free­dom in Amer­ica are code­pen­dent: indi­vid­ual faith requires free­dom, free­dom requires pub­lic moral­ity, pub­lic moral­ity requires wide­spread indi­vid­ual faith.

The found­ing fathers (the major­ity of whom were thought­ful Chris­tians) seemed to think that sep­a­rat­ing the church from the state was a pro­foundly bib­li­cal idea: I have to say that the mes­sage I’ve always taken from 1 Tim­o­thy 2.1–2 is that we need to pray for our rulers to leave us alone (faith-wise). In other words, it seems that sep­a­ra­tion of church and state was God’s idea.

Inter­est­ingly, I was fin­ish­ing this book I came across an arti­cle in Books & Cul­ture about recent schol­ar­ship on this very theme (schol­ar­ship which I ref­er­enced in an ear­lier post­ing)! The arti­cle is titled Why Sep­a­ra­tion of Church and State Is Still A Good Idea: Even If It May Not Be What the Founders Had In Mind. I found the arti­cle middling-to-fair, but that’s prob­a­bly because I’d just come from read­ing Guiness.

If you’re curi­ous about the role of reli­gion in America’s pub­lic life, I encour­age you to pick up this book and read through it. You might also want to check out the ear­lier post­ing on an inter­view with Charles Tay­lor about What It Means To Be Sec­u­lar.

Stan­ford University�wow! If you�re like most Chris­tians, you�re excited and ner­vous at the same time. You�re excited because Stan­ford is such a great school, but you�re ner­vous about what it will do to your faith. If that describes you, I encour­age you to med­i­tate on the story of Daniel.

When Baby­lon defeated Israel around 600 B.C., the Baby­lo­ni­ans took the chil­dren of the Israeli nobles to Baby­lon for reed­u­ca­tion (a pol­icy designed to ensure the future loy­alty of their cap­tured coun­tries), and so Daniel was taken to Baby­lon to undergo a three year course of stud­ies in Baby­lon­ian law, mythol­ogy, and cul­ture designed to pre­pare him for a career of pub­lic ser­vice. (Daniel 1:1–4)

Think about that: as a young adult he under­went a three year course of study designed to groom him for suc­cess in a spe­cific career. In other words, he was a stu­dent at the Uni­ver­sity of Baby­lon! Let�s exam­ine a few prin­ci­ples we can infer from their experiences:

Daniel remained true to his val­ues, even at per­sonal risk. (Daniel 1:8–16)

But Daniel resolved that he would not defile him­self with the royal rations of food and wine; so he asked the palace mas­ter to allow him not to defile him­self. Now God allowed Daniel to receive favor and com­pas­sion from the palace mas­ter. The palace mas­ter said to Daniel, �I am afraid of my lord the king; he has appointed your food and your drink. If he should see you in poorer con­di­tion than the other young men of your own age, you would endan­ger my head with the king.� Then Daniel asked the guard whom the palace mas­ter had appointed over Daniel, Hana­niah, Mishael, and Azariah: �Please test your ser­vants for ten days. Let us be given veg­eta­bles to eat and water to drink. You can then com­pare our appear­ance with the appear­ance of the young men who eat the royal rations, and deal with your ser­vants accord­ing to what you observe.� So he agreed to this pro­posal and tested them for ten days. At the end of ten days it was observed that they appeared bet­ter and fat­ter than all the young men who had been eat­ing the royal rations. So the guard con­tin­ued to with­draw their royal rations and the wine they were to drink, and gave them vegetables.

Daniel excelled at his stud­ies, even though he was study­ing pagan mate­ri­als. (Daniel 1:17–20)

To these four young men God gave knowl­edge and skill in every aspect of lit­er­a­ture and wis­dom; Daniel also had insight into all visions and dreams. At the end of the time that the king had set for them to be brought in, the palace mas­ter brought them into the pres­ence of Neb­uchad­nez­zar, and the king spoke with them. And among them all, no one was found to com­pare with Daniel, Hana­niah, Mishael, and Azariah; there­fore they were sta­tioned in the king�s court. In every mat­ter of wis­dom and under­stand­ing con­cern­ing which the king inquired of them, he found them ten times bet­ter than all the magi­cians and enchanters in his whole kingdom.

Daniel took risks for God, even where oth­ers had failed. (Daniel 2:12–19)

…the king flew into a vio­lent rage and com­manded that all the wise men of Baby­lon be destroyed. The decree was issued, and the wise men were about to be exe­cuted; and they looked for Daniel and his com­pan­ions, to exe­cute them. Then Daniel responded with pru­dence and dis­cre­tion to Ari­och, the king�s chief exe­cu­tioner, who had gone out to exe­cute the wise men of Baby­lon; he asked Ari­och, the royal offi­cial, �Why is the decree of the king so urgent?� Ari­och then explained the mat­ter to Daniel. So Daniel went in and requested that the king give him time and he would tell the king the inter­pre­ta­tion. Then Daniel went to his home and informed his com­pan­ions, Hana­niah, Mishael, and Azariah, and told them to seek mercy from the God of heaven con­cern­ing this mys­tery, so that Daniel and his com­pan­ions with the rest of the wise men of Baby­lon might not per­ish. Then the mys­tery was revealed to Daniel in a vision of the night, and Daniel blessed the God of heaven.

Resolve now that you will choose the course of Daniel dur­ing your time at Stan­ford! Med­i­tate on Daniel and the chal­lenges he faced, imag­ine what anal­o­gous sit­u­a­tions you might encounter at Stan­ford, and decide in advance how you will respond!

There are two easy things you can do to get involved:

1. Drop by one of our weekly meet­ings.
2. Sign up for our email announce­ments list. That way you’ll be in the loop about every­thing we do! The signup box should be on the right-hand side of this page.
3. Con­sider lis­ten­ing to some of our past mes­sages to get a feel for the group.

Don’t worry: we NEVER share your email address with any­one else and you can always tell us you don’t want any more email announce­ments and we’ll stop right away.

I ran across this at Tolle, Blogge: you can get some free stuff to read!

The blog­ger who men­tioned this site espe­cially rec­om­mends The Inter­col­le­giate Review.