First, corporate witness is merely thoughtfully crafting a way for the individuals in your Christian community of academics on campus, to be a witness that can be greater than the sum of your “parts." That is, there is a sense in which the impact of your community can be understood as summing up the total impact of its individuals for Christ; but that’s not all there is. Second, as a leader in your Christian community, one of your tasks, along with your colleagues on the leadership team, is to think of and craft ways and corporate means to winsomely attract the larger academic community to the person of Christ using the resources of the whole fellowship. This has already been done by Christian faculty communities on many secular campuses!
It is helpful in doing this to think through the issues of Christ and academic culture and perhaps thinking through the issues of Christ and (general) culture in order to learn from histor what others have thought about this and how they did what they did. So, the basic idea is to learn from what was good from that and to explore and create new ways to legitmately and to appropriately draw the proper attention to Jesus that He deserves and the claims He makes on lives within the academic community. And, we believe, to do that in the most winsome way that we can.
Here are some resources, along with your reading Scripture, to look at as you develop your perspective from an informed Scriptural way of seeing things...
Resources:
Christ and culture subsite link
Also,
- ACI Article: A Funny Thing Thing Happened…
- ACI Article: Jesus and Academic Culture Prt 1
- ACI Article: Jesus and Academic Culture Prt 2
- ACI Article: Jesus and Academic Culture Prt 3
- ACI Article: Jesus and Academic Culture Prt 4
- ACI Article: Jesus and Academic Culture Prt 5
Jesus and Academic Culture Podcast Series (James Cook)
- Podcast #1: Introduction to the Series (13 min)
- Podcast #2: Chapter 1 from Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture (20:48 min)
- Handout A (Notes on “Acknowledgments" & "Chapter 1")
- Resource B (Slides on Two Forms of Postmodernism)
- Resource C (ACI Article, “Worldview and Thinking Christianly”)
- Handout D (Slides on Chapter 1 from Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture)
- Podcast #3: Niebuhr’s Typology (29 min)
- Podcast #4: D.A. Carson’s Critique of Niebuhr’s Work (17:05 min)
- Handout A (Slides on Carson’s Critique)
- Podcast #5: D.A. Carson’s Alternative in Christ and Culture Revisited (12:43 min)
- Handout A (Slides on Carson’s Alternative)
- Podcast #6: Big Ideas that Influence Academic Culture (13:48 min)
- *Resource A (ACI article, "Faith and Reason")
- Resource B (Slides: Brief Summary of the History of Philosophical Ideas)
- Resource C (Webpage: History of Ideas)
- Resource D (Webpage: Revisiting the History of Ideas)
- Resource E (Summary of the Reformation 5 “solas”)
- Handout F (Slides on Big Ideas That Influence Academic Culture)
- Podcast #7: The Division Among Present Day Evangelicals (27:37 min)
- Handout A (Notes on Scalia Video: "'What Does “Left” and “Right” Mean'")
- Resource B (Video Lecture - Justice Antonin Scalia - What Does “Left” and “Right” Mean)
- Resource C (Summary of the Reformation 5 “solas”)
- Resource D (Machen’s “Christ and Culture” article)
- Handout E (The Problem of Correlation)
- Handout F (Slides from The Division Among Present Day Evangelicals)
- Podcast #8: Going Forward (20:16 min)
- Handout A (ACI White Paper on Peer to Peer Evangelism Among U. Faculty)
- Resource B [11 minute ACI produced video, “A Primer on Critical Theory (and Critical Theories)]
- Resource C (ACI article: Jesus and Academic Culture #2, Presenting the Gospel in Academe)
- Resource D (ACI article: Jesus and Academic Culture #3, Shifting From Seeking Truth to Seeking Social Justice)
- Resource E (ACI article: Jesus and Academic Culture #4, Critical Theory and Critical Theories)
- Resource F (ACI article: Jesus and Academic Culture #5, Answering Concerns and Critics)
- Handout G (Notes on Scalia Video: What Does “Left” and “Right” Mean)
- Resource H (Video Lecture - Justice Antonin Scalia - What Does “Left” and “Right” Mean)
- Handout I (Slides from Going Forward)