“Life-Changing Experience” (by Aaron Graham) in the September- October 2008 issue of Sojourners highlights an important part of the journey that we strive to challenge our students to at a secular university. The young evangelicals that you interviewed sound as if they began from a Christian perspective—i.e. the life-changing experience they needed was to move beyond what they saw happening in their churches to what their greater role could be in the world.
At the Christian Association at the University of Pennsylvania, we more likely start with students who see their greater role in the world but do not see any connection to what that means for them personally and spiritually. The Christian Association works to promote open minds and working faith across faith traditions, cultural differences, and intellectual pursuits.
Might there be some way for us to link those young evangelicals with the young social reformers so that the life-changing experience transcends faith?
Katherine Primus,
The Christian Association at the University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia