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Christian students are likely to see themselves in the experiences of the chronicled pioneers. It is a story of courage and resilience, revolving around the experiences of youths who set themselves apart to be an example of Christian values and to live honouring God in a perverse environment. At the heart of the book is the effort to embolden and equip students in the pursuit of their evangelistic mandate.
Fielder, as in his other works “The Perils and Values of Reading” and “Excuse me, Mr Davies – Hallelujah!” warns against the danger of playing off education against faith.
The campus fellowships conveniently strike a fine balance between the two worlds of spiritual fervour and intellectual culture. There is clear emphasis that both faith and education are essential influences for modern society and the fellowships are shown to provide the setting for their co-existence.
Fielder demonstrates that no phenomenon can better dispel the myth that faith and education are incompatible as sustained operation of biblically grounded and rationally driven student Christian groups. Christian student movements are a defining influence across tertiary institutions worldwide, informed by the quest to maximise the lives of individuals and stake the claims of Christianity in a lukewarm generation.
The Christian Union, in particular, is now a sustained feature on most universities and colleges, just as it is in high schools, thanks to the dedicated service of the trailblazing student evangelists.
Branches of the union were originally part of the Inter-Varsity Fellowship now the Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship in the U.S.
I have had a first hand appreciation of the fellowships as a forum for holistic education which cultivates both mind and heart from interactions with the Christian Union, RCZ on Campus, Adventist Society, BLW Campus Ministry, Methodist Society and other ministries. However, the immediate challenge for most Christian fellowship participants in some cases is reconciling the Christian world-view with the hostile secularist outlook which holds sway on the campus corridors.
Christian students will find themselves tossed from the book as from a springboard to pursue their call of faith with new affirmation and conviction.
On first convening, the Inter-Varsity Fellowship was a negligible group whose members suffered a double-barrelled challenge in that they were despised by both the students and the mother institutions off-campus.
“Keen, dedicated and conscious of their biblical roots though they were, we must not forget that any religious authorities who might have noticed them would have regarded them as an irrelevant rump from bygone days,” recalls Fielder.
Likewise, the relationship of students movements to their mother churches today is not always rosy. Some students want to incorporate new ways of doing things, sometimes for better, and sometimes (unwittingly) for worse at a pace the mother denominations might not be comfortable with.
The generation gap might be even more apparent in inter-denominational groups who incorporate “cosmopolitan” influences as they merge different denominations.
However, what is apparent in the movements is a sincere zeal for greater impact. Churches will do well to negotiate around the generation gap and support student initiatives which are sometimes not optimised for lack of resources and approval.
Readers will also encounter great debaters such as Allan Stibbs who upheld the faith in the face of scholarly adversity.
“At Cambridge God allowed me to prove that his Word is trustworthy. I was led, quite unexpectedly, to read modern theology, only to be told by some that there was no place in the ranks of theological scholarship for those who do not accept modern critical theories with regard to the Bible,” Stibbs recounts.
He, however, stood on the authority of the scriptures and turned the adversity into an opportunity to minister the truth about the inspiration of the Bible to others with arguments that could not be gainsaid.
Stibbs alludes to the three Hebrew youths, who resisted Babylonian idol worship in the Bible and says the same God who kept them in Babylon kept him at Cambridge.
The same challenge still stalks devout young Christians but going through others’ experiences students are bound to know how to react in certain situations and resist secular compromise.
I commend Fielder’s narrative because it urges Christians not to shy from engaging secular thinkers.
Rather than isolating themselves, Christians must be open to dialogue, and the by demonstrate with the burden of proof that they front the more credible world-view.
Online Reporter