A blogger named Sarah expresses frustration that the college students in her class on Christian belief, which she taught at a nameless Catholic university, were all but clueless when she asked them on the first day of class to make a list of what Christians believe. They could barely come up with anything theological, but all of them listed culture-war positions (e.g., abortion is wrong, homosexuality is sinful). It’s not that those beliefs are necessarily wrong, but that it is a scandal that college students who have been raised as Christian define their faith this way. She writes:

The fact that such a reality is possible in a classroom filled with students raised in the Church makes me gravely worried for the future of Christianity. It becomes clearer to me every semester that we as a Church have misplaced our priorities. And it’s not always the students from conservative backgrounds who exhibit this lack of basic Christian education. With some regularity, I encounter students who identify as liberal Christians but know only about Christian principles of social justice and little to nothing about the theology that undergirds those principles. If you look at how Christian leaders are portrayed in the public eye, it never has anything to do with affirmations of the Trinity, the power of the sacraments, or the hope of resurrection. More often than not, Christian leaders that most people see publically (especially in the media) are combatting behaviors and social norms perceived to be contrary to the Christian faith. It seems that anyone can create a list of items that Christians are against: gay marriage, abortion, war, capitalism, poverty, etc. It’s no wonder these are the first sorts of things that come to mind for a lot of young people when they try and list core tenets of the Christian faith. It’s regrettable that Christianity is becoming more defined by boundaries of the culture war than by the good news of Christ. We lose people because we lose the opportunity to invite them to follow Christ as one of his disciples.

As a student of church history, I’m all too aware of the fights people have fought with a desire to keep Christ at the center of the Church. But as issues like homosexuality, abortion, and freedom of religion become the defining issues of American (small-o) orthodoxy, I have to wonder if we’ve placed the culture wars at the center. Every day at work, I see the consequences of these religious battles as I look into the faces of the next generation. I can’t help but sound off from my corner of the universe, entreating all Christian leaders of every tradition to return their focus to Christ. Surely, the attractive pull of the Gospel has the power to guide us all into the fullness of life in Christ… while also having the power to bring the next generation along with us.

The distinguished Dante teacher Ron Herzman told me recently that his undergraduates love studying the Divine Comedy, even though most of them give no evidence of being particular pious, because it gives them a way to talk about God and related topics. I puzzled slightly about why the standard religious categories wouldn’t afford them the vocabulary and the conceptual framework to talk about these things. This blog post from Sarah makes it more clear to me. Chances are they don’t even have the basics of Christianity down, and may not even know what they don’t know. The Commedia is a terrific way to explore Christian teaching, because it is so narratively and imaginatively rich. (And by the way, please revisit yesterday’s Paradiso, Canto II entry; the Dante translator Andrew Frisardi wrote me overnight to help me understand the metaphysics of the Commedia more clearly. You’ll find his comments helpful, I think.)

Leaving Dante aside, Sarah’s point ought to be a slap across the face to us all. Don’t miss that she said this is a problem with Christian students from both conservative and liberal backgrounds. We read news reports about significant numbers of young Americans falling away from the Christian faith … but I wonder how many of those kids even know what they’re rejecting.

[H/T: First Things]