USA Today reports on how conversation about God is changing on college campuses.
Filmmaker Dan Merchant stood before an auditorium of students assembled for the first campus screening of his forthcoming movie, Lord Save Us From Your Followers. Merchant, a Christian, was at Lewis & Clark College, a school in Portland, Ore., deemed by the Princeton Review college guide to be one of the least religious in the USA.
Yet one conspicuous reality defied a key premise of the event from the moment the college chaplain brought Merchant to the stage: Students packed the good-sized hall, overflowing into the aisles and entry ways, for a chance to see what most knew was a Christian-themed movie with a Gospel message.
And by the time they had finished watching the film — a humorous and heartfelt examination of the culture wars featuring a Michael Moore-meets-Monty Python style — those students could not wait to talk to Merchant about his movie and his faith.
“What struck me,” Merchant said later, “was their openness to this conversation.”
Students open to a conversation about Christianity, even on a campus with an ultrasecular reputation? Such is the state of affairs at the nation’s colleges and universities, where religion is experiencing something of a renaissance, although not necessarily in the shapes and forms older generations are used to seeing.
Lewis and Clark College, Portland OR, reports:
In February, Lewis & Clark hosted the first college-campus screening of a forthcoming documentary exploring the collision of faith and culture in America, titled “Lord, Save Us from Your Followers.” Sponsored by the chapel office and the Christian student group Agape, the special event welcomed secular and religious students to a discussion with producer-director Dan Merchant about the issues raised by the film.
About 300 students filled Council Chambers to be among the first viewers of the documentary, which opens nationwide in June. A short film about the Lewis & Clark event captures the students’ emotional and intellectual responses to the film’s message of compassion and cooperation.
USA Today article is here.
Lewis and Clark College report is here.
More on the film here.
You Tube video of Lewis and Clark event follows: