American civilization is obsessed with freedom, which in this postmodern culture has become an excuse for autonomy.  We have absolutized this view of freedom and now regard it as the center of our civilization.  Legally it is centered in the First Amendment.  What is shocking is how few really understand what the First Amendment says.  Let’s think about this together.

• First, according to two new surveys from the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), both college students and college administrators are in desperate need of a refresher course in the First Amendment.  That amendment begins, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise therof.”  Twin surveys by both FIRE and the University of Connecticut’s Center for Survey Research and Analysis indicate that few on campus really understand it.  One of 10 college administrators even checked “don’t know” when asked to name a specific First Amendment right.  Some other specific results of these surveys:  (1)  Only 21% of administrators and 30% of students knew the First Amendment guarantees religious freedom; (2)  Only 6% of administrators and 2% of students knew that freedom of religion is the first freedom mentioned by the First Amendment; (3)  74% of students and 87% of administrators believe it is “essential” that students have this right, but. . . ; (4)  Only 41% of administrators and 32% of students believe that religious individuals should spread their beliefs by whatever legal means available; (5)  Only 43% of administrators and 23% of students “strongly support” allowing religious groups, including those with traditional views, to advance those views on campus.  The results of this survey are shocking and have profound implications.

• Second, what is the practical impact of these results on our campuses?  At Rutgers and the University of North Carolina, the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship was threatened with the denial of official recognition because it insisted its members be Christians.  At Cornell, a professor who put up posters that included references to the Bible and information about homosexuals changing their sexual orientation was charged with “sexual harassment.”  At Penn State, the young Americans for Freedom were informed that their constitution and mission statement were “discriminatory” because they identified rights as “God-given.”  In addition, the surveys also found that administrators and students support the right of free religious expression only so long as that expression does not offend others.  Alan Charles Kors, a University of Pennsylvania history professor, writes about this double standard:  “If an antiwar group put up a poster of Iraqi children they claimed were maimed by George Bush, nobody would blink.  But let a pro-life group put up a poster of an aborted fetus and suddenly it becomes, ‘Well, they crossed the line.’”  There is a clear link between the First Amendment and the freedom of religion but that link on many college campuses is being ignored and therefore freedom of religion is being violated.

• Finally, despite the negatives of the above surveys, there is another one that gives hope for our college campuses.  These survey results were just released by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA.  They demonstrate that more than two-thirds of college students have a strong interest in religious or spiritual matters and that 70% of students who responded said they attended religious services in the past year.  Further, over 78% said that they had discussed religion or spirituality with friends.  Finally, over 73% said their religious and spiritual beliefs had helped them develop their identity.  Of course, the issue in such a survey is that the focus was not on biblical Christianity; it was religion in a broad sense, which includes Eastern faiths, cults and the inner world of eastern mysticism.  However, what the study does demonstrate is that college life does not necessarily produce the triumph of pure secularism.  The challenge is channeling that spirituality toward Jesus Christ and His truth.  For that reason, organizations like InterVarsity, the Navigators, Campus Crusade, etc. need our support.  They can reach these students who express such a strong interest in spirituality.

See the editorial in the Wall Street Journal (21 November 2003) and the Chronicle of Higher Education (21 November 2003).

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ROLE MODELS FOR THE YOUTH CULTURE

This last year has seen the rightful demise of two “media deities” in America, namely Michael Jackson and Britney Spears.  Both represent monumental tragedies.  Michael Jackson, the self-named “King of Pop,” has been self-destructing for about a decade.  He has had countless surgeries on his face, appears frail and ill, has not produced any new music in the last decade and has not toured America since 1991.  Further, he did not make the top 20 LA Times record-industry poll naming the valuable acts in the music business.  He is a sad figure to watch.  For the second time, he is now charged with sexual molestation of a young boy.  (Earlier he paid $20 million to a family who had made a similar charge.)  Whether these charges are true or not, the public via the media has already found him guilty.  In many ways the tragedy of the Jackson spectacle is that it says more about our culture than we want to admit.  The lure of the Jackson story is that it is about sex, specifically pedophilia.  The public appears enamored with the Jackson hype because we are a porn-saturated nation and about the only remaining taboo is pedophilia.  His self-destructive behavior, barring God’s gracious intervention, will produce just that—his destruction.  When that happens, the public will probably resonate with joy over his demise.  Jackson is a colossal tragedy but in saying that perhaps his tragic nature is more revealing about American culture than we are willing to admit.

Second, a word about Britney Spears.  Beginning as a young Disney Mouseketeer, Spears quickly took on the image of a chaste, young singer proud of her virginity and morality.  She was marketed as a devoutly Baptist schoolgirl who could sing and dance well.  The young girls of American culture loved her.  But quickly she fell from favor and today is trying to remake herself as a sex goddess, very active and sexually spontaneous.  Her recent music video and appearance with Madonna indicate the lengths she will go to remake her image.  It is disgusting, but the media frenzy loves it.  They feed on her demise as a lion feeds on its prey.  And the larger culture loves it!

Both Jackson and Spears reflect the decadence of Western Civilization, not so much in their music but in their lifestyles and the way the media frenzy feeds on them.  There is nothing more tragic and sad than watching two very public idols strive to gain acceptance and understanding and fail so miserably in doing so.  Their failure is lethal for our teens.  Those who have wrapped their identities around Jackson and Spears will find only more disappointment and additional hurt.  But this is a great opportunity for the church.  Teen identity is not centered on Michael or Britney; it is found in God.  Teen identity begins with seeing themselves as created in God’s image.  Teen identity begins with seeing themselves as righteous in God’s eyes through the finished work of Christ that is appropriated by faith.  Michael and Britney are fleeting media deities; God is permanent and unchanging.

See Frank Rich’s provocative article in the Sunday New York Times (30 November 2003).

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THE REFRESHMENT OF C.S. LEWIS

The assassination of President Kennedy on 22 November 1963 has always overshadowed the death of C.S. Lewis, who died the same day.  In the midst of so much despair in our world of 2003, Lewis is a breath of refreshing air.  Lewis was an atheist for much of his adult life.  He reached maturity when much of Europe was being convulsed by the rise of two new tyrannies—communism in Russia and fascism in Spain, Italy and Germany.  In addition, trendy conclusions coming from psychology and theology discredited the Christian doctrines of sin and repentance.  These trends argued that the “root causes” of the world’s disorder were social and political.  In the 1920s, Lewis came to faith in Jesus Christ and reached a different conclusion:  The evil that he observed in the world was due to sin, the fundamental tragedy of the human condition.  He wrote, “Pride, and the poisoned conscience it created, functioned as the engine of the world’s woes.  Unchallenged, it led to a ruthless, sleepless, unsmiling concentration upon self, which is the mark of Hell.”

After his conversion to Christ, Lewis embarked on a series of projects that penetrated Western Civilization with the truth of Christianity.  He gave a series of BBC talks on theology that were later compiled into his classic, Mere Christianity.  He wrote small, yet profound works on the issues of human significance and the problem of evil, entitled The Abolition of Man and The Problem of Pain.  Although these are short works, one cannot read them quickly.  Each sentence needs careful pondering and thought.  I have found that I cannot read C.S. Lewis fast!  He also wrote a series of beloved children’s stories, The Chronicles of Narnia, which resonate with the themes of sin and redemption.  In his own words, his desire was to make “the repellant doctrines of Christianity” plausible to the modern ear. 

Finally, Lewis saw the profound shortcomings of humanity, even sometimes in the leaders of the church.  But he never blamed such shortcomings on the Christian faith itself.  His writings offer wondrous glimpses into the divine goodness, or what he called “the weight of glory.”  It is that vision of glory that has produced some of the great masterpieces of art and music, he argued.  Equally, this vision has produced countless people who are willing to care for plague victims, defend the rights of children, abolish slavery and risk life to feed the poor in a war zone.  He wrote, “If you read history, you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. . . It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this.”  Nothing more accurately describes the peril of this postmodern world.  Western Civilization has lost its vision of the next world and has thereby become enslaved to this one.  Reading C.S. Lewis brings refreshment, courage and godly optimism.  We owe him a great debt.

See Joseph Loconte’s essay in the New York Times (22 November 2003). 

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