In Education’s End, Anthony Kronman accuses humanities departments in U.S. universities of dodging their responsibility to help students engage in a time-honored adolescent activity: discovering the meaning of life. Today’s students are so driven, he says, that they are missing the opportunity to consider the future “from a point of view outside the channels of their careers.”
Manhood and Womanhood are free gifts from God. Adulthood is earned. These are the two basic premises of the youth formation program the Journey to Adulthood, one of the most popular youth formation programs in the Episcopal Church.
For those of you who have never been to a youth conference of the Episcopal variety, here is a snapshot of what you might do if you were a youth participant: lots of genuinely good live and interactive music, small group discussions and games, meeting new people, eating ridiculously, staying up late and being silly, going to workshops on anything from swing dance to sexuality to stargazing, some sort of outdoorsy hiking experience, …
Recent studies of college students’ attitudes toward religion suggest that the academy is no longer the bastion of secularism it was once assumed to be. And these studies further reveal that the spiritual landscape on today’s college campuses is virtually unrecognizable from what we’ve seen in the past. In response, the Social Science Research Council has a new website that offers a series of essays about the religious engagement of college students.
Has your church assessed the costs and benefits of VBS-in-a-box?