Veritas Forum Presents Christian Worldview to Campuses Around America
The forum is quite different from other Christian campus events in that it invites all people to present their alternate worldview as part of the event - be they agnostics, secularist, Muslims, Jews, or Hindus.
The Veritas Forum has enjoined college students to present the Christian worldview in an open forum where members of the community can express various worldviews and religious beliefs. Already more than 45 universities, including Stanford, Brown, New York University, Yale, and University of Virginia have held their own Veritas Forum.
"The Veritas forum was conceived at Harvard University in 1992, when a small group of undergraduates were prompted by the spiritual emptiness they perceived around them to create a lecture series designed to address some of the most fundamental questions of life" from a Christian perspective - Who am I? What is my purpose? What is the true meaning of life? (Columbia Spectator).
Harvard, along with over 50 other colleges and universities across the country, has continued to hold this forum annually over the past 13 years.
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The most recent Veritas Forums were held February 21-27, 2005 at the University of Kentucky; February 22-24, 2005 at the University of Southern California; and March 2, 2005 at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Upcoming Veritas Forums are being held this weekend from March 11-17, 2005 at the Louisiana State University, and March 21-23, 2005 at the University of Virginia.
Rather than being a campus ministry, the central planners at Veritas support the campus' own Christian body, including both students and faculty to plan the event, and in doing so, manage to tailor the week-long series of events to that particular campus' intellectual and spiritual needs.
"Veritas Forum is a non-profit organization whose mission is to create forums on university campuses to further explore true life through the collaborative efforts of local student planners, community members, faculty, and campus leaders," and is thus "able to host an indigenous forum, unique to each campus and relevant to the needs of diverse student bodies," states Veritas.
"The Veritas Forum explores the relationship of Christ to all life’s questions rather than insisting that faith and intellectual inquiry be separated from one another as the modern university often does," and "hark[s] back to the original purpose of the university" (www.veritas.org).
At the March 4, 2004, Princeton University Veritas lecture, Dr. H. “Fritz” Schaefer wove together the gospel into a topic of interest to the campus community, "The Big Bang, Stephen Hawking, and God."
Several attendees indicated on comment cards, "I am interested in discussing the spiritual implications of tonight's lecture. Please give me a call."
"As a Christian, I was surprised to see your comfort in expressing your beliefs at an Ivy League university. ... A Christian worldview is [normally] met with great hostility. Thanks for your calm, confident, and articulate presentation," stated a community member.
An undergraduate student said, "I like the way this lecture let me see that many scientists surprisingly believe in the existence of God ...." "You are a breath of fresh air to see a chemistry prof present the Gospel message! Keep going ...."
Just some of the questions he addressed were: "Is the universe finite or infinite in size and content? Has the universe been here forever or did it have a beginning? If the universe was created, how was this creation accomplished, and what can we learn about the agent and events of creation? How do the laws and constants of physics relate to the support and development of life?" The entire transcript of the talk can be found at http://www.leaderu.com/offices/schaefer/docs/bigbang.html.
It seems Dr. "Fritz" Schaefer is especially poised to answer these questions. A Graham Perdue Professor of Chemistry and the director of the Center for Computational Quantum Chemistry at the University of Georgia, he has been nominated for the Nobel Prize and was recently cited as the third most quoted chemist in the world.
"The significance and joy in my science comes in the occasional moments of discovering something new and saying to myself, 'So that's how God did it!' My goal is to understand a little corner of God's plan." (U.S. News & World Report, Dec. 23, 1991; www.leaderu.com).
The Veritas Forum believes that many of society’s future leaders are among university students today, and they work to challenge these students to go beyond the classroom and ask life's most-pressing questions.
The forum is quite different from other Christian campus events in that it invites all people to present their alternate worldview as part of the event - be they agnostics, secularist, Muslims, Jews, or Hindus. Each campus planning team invites speakers and presenters who are diverse in discipline, gender, race, background, and life experience. Some are scientists, some artists, some professors, and some students, all gathered to join the discussion of how their pursuit of truth corresponds with their understanding of the world (ww.veritas.org).
Subjects approach various academic disciplines from a perspective of faith, "such as UCLA’s discussion of the history of science and theism with Dr. Robert Koons, professor of philosophy at University of Texas (April, 2003) to pressing issues of contemporary culture. For example, Ohio State’s forum theme, “What does it mean to be human?” (Nov. 2002), explored topics ranging from a talk entitled “The Power of Porn, the Power of Love” given by Gene McConnell, founder and president of Authentic Relationships International, and recovered sex addict to “Heaven in a nightclub; The Christian roots of Jazz”, a performance and discussion led by Dr. Bill Edgar of Westminster Theological Seminary" (Veritas).
At the Columbia University Veritas Forum which took place early February 2005, an open discussion panel titled, "Buddha, Man & Jesus: Three Perspectives on Life" attracted over 700 participants in the newly built auditorium. The campus' nationally renowned Buddhist, Robert Thurman, a famous humanist, Philip Kitcher, and a professor who studies Christianity's history, Finny Kuruvilla fielded questions from a moderator and debated with one another in front of a diverse body of constituents that make up Columbia University.
The students who worked to bring the forum to Columbia felt that the Christian perspective was often marginalized at the University. “On Columbia’s campus, people oftentimes don’t give Christianity a chance, they have a specific negative view of it,” said Tien-Lun Chuang, SEAS ’06. Chuang was one of the events coordinators and a member of Columbia Students for Christ, Columbia’s version of the national student group Campus Crusade for Christ (Columbia Spectator).
In addition, there was a dramatic performance of the Gospel of Luke by Broadway actor Bruce Kuhn and a discussion, “Does Science Point to Intelligent Design?” in which panelists debated divine presence in the origins of life.
Though it was the first Veritas Forum held at Columbia, "students coordinators are confident" that there will be many more to come, "and that its mission is of critical significance to students."
“Probably one of the most important things you could do in college is to really learn what your world view is,” said Tien Chuang, one of the main student coordinators. “We’re all busy, but wrestling with these questions is important.”
"Another highlight of the Veritas forum was an address by Father Richard John Neuhaus, entitled 'The Nature of the University: Who Are We Becoming?' Neuhaus, a Catholic priest who was recently named one of Time magazine’s '25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America,' spoke broadly of the secularization of institutions of higher learning in the Western world" (Columbia Spectator).
"Neuhaus said that the salvation of the University lies in its ability to return to being a community of disciplined scholars. Speaking directly to the audience, he said 'we must strive to help it become again a place searching for wisdom, a place pursuing ultimate knowledge of the eternal whole" (Columbia Spectator).
