Writer Dwight Longenecker of Intercollegiate review suggests that students of faith can and often do come under attack for their views on college campuses.

He also says that such students shouldn’t take these attacks lying down.

Reality and Religion

College is supposed to be about education, and there are not a few college professors who sincerely believe that the first step towards education is for a student to develop a critical mind, and to do this every obstacle in their students’ worldview that hinders critical thinking must be dismantled. The main obstacle being religion.

The secular educationalist regards religion as at best, a superstitious, immature, Sunday School worldview replete with miracles and supernatural fairy tales, and at worst, a serious psychosis, from which the poor student needs to be delivered.

It’s like the naive freshman needs a secular exorcism.

Unfortunately, too many religious educators and parents play into the secular educationalist’s hands. The parents themselves haven’t been catechized since their confirmation class. They don’t really know (or live) their faith, and they toodle along with the comfortable, respectable form of false religion rather than the challenging, radical form of real religion.

Furthermore, too many religious educators have been content to pass on a highly subjective, sentimentalized version of the Christian faith rather than the bracing, clear and table-turning version found in the gospels. They’ve re-imagined Jesus of Nazareth for American suburbia, emasculated the Son of Man and turned Christ the Tiger into Christ the pussycat.

The secular educationalist thinks the Christian student has been brainwashed into a superstitious, sentimental, unscientific and uncritical worldview…and he’s right.

Consequently, when the Christian student comes to college he finds that his milk chocolate religion can’t take the heat. He hasn’t been taught how to defend his faith, so he falls at the first challenge, and with all the delights of the world, the flesh and the devil on offer at college, it was never going to be a serious battle to start with.