Book: To Think Christianly

[Ernie]

To Think Christianly – A History of L’Abri, Regent College, and the Christian Study Center Movement. 2020. by Charles E. Cotherman

Been reading and thinking about the content of this book the last 24 hours. Mostly because I have been working on a vision for a Christian study center the last 6 months and someone recommended this book to me.
I don't know that I have read a book in 20 years that holds my attention quite like this book. The last similar book was probably John Ruth's "The Earth is the Lords." Had trouble going to sleep last night I was so awake. I told my wife that this book has a way of stirring all that is good and noble within me. (Something that probably happens to me several times a year.)
Today this feeling comes as a result of the visions described in this book, as well as the author's insight into lives of the main characters, as well as his insight into the values and ethos of the Evangelical community in the last half of the 20th century.

https://www.amazon.com/Think-Christianl ... 0830852824

[barnhart]

What are the major themes.

[temporal1]

Ernie,
from reading the book’s description and comments, it’s easy to see your interest.
i did not know or think of a “study center movement” it’s interesting to read about it in this way.

was this book recommended to you? how did you happen upon it?
i plan to share it with my family. my daughter-in-law teaches at a state university. i think they will be interested.

FOREWORD / Kenneth G. Elzinga

TO THINK CHRISTIANLY is a book of intellectual history that also is a pleasure to read—no easy task for an author. Charles Cotherman shows how the confluence of Francis Schaeffer at L’Abri and James Houston at Regent College helped initiate and shape the study center movement in the United States. While not a manual on how to start a study center, the book advocates the value of study centers as places where individuals—often college students—are encouraged to use their minds to know God and to understand contemporary culture.

For those who want to learn about study centers, this book is a great place to start. For those involved with study centers, this book is a carefully researched and engagingly written account of how it all began. A thesis of the book is that L’Abri and Regent College were at the taproot of the study center movement. Schaeffer and Houston take center stage, but Cotherman includes many others who played important supporting roles.

Cotherman frequently mentions the Center for Christian Study at the University of Virginia as one of the first study centers to be (unlike L’Abri) physically adjacent to a university and (unlike Regent) not administratively connected to a university. Full disclosure—I was involved in the start of this center. I have observed several ways in which it has enriched the DNA of the University of Virginia and the surrounding community. Let me comment on this.

First, the Center for Christian Study is a center. This means there is a place, a geographical footprint. In addition, I have often heard the UVA study center described as a “safe place.” It is safe not just in the sense of physical safety but also in the sense of being a safe place where one can bring disagreements and doubts.

When a man named Nathanael first heard about Jesus, he scornfully asked, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (Jn 1:46 NRSV). Colleges and universities today are full of people like Nathanael.

Can anything good come out of Christianity? A study center is a place to ask that question.
When a man named Thomas heard of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead, he had doubts whether this were true.

Study centers should be safe places for the scornful Nathanaels and the doubting Thomases.

The Christian faith makes much of the words following and sending. When Jesus began his public ministry, he went up to strangers—Matthew, James, John, Peter, and Andrew—who were busily engaged in their lives, and said, “Follow me.” And they did.
At one point in his public ministry Jesus said, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (Lk 9:23, emphasis added). Fast-forward two thousand years, and people are still following Jesus.

Jesus also used the word send.
In one of the most remarkable statements Jesus ever made, he said, “Peace be with you!
As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (Jn 20:21, emphasis added). In what many Christians now call the Great Commission, Jesus sends his followers out into the world with these instructions: “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19).

Study centers, such as the one at the University of Virginia, meet at the confluence of following and sending. This interplay represents what study centers should be about. They should produce followers of Jesus and also should send followers of Jesus out into the world.

As biblical literacy dwindles and as the institutional church becomes less commonly a place where people go to be catechized and learn about Christianity, study centers become even more important.

Indeed, in a post-Christian era, study centers can be places where students who know nothing about the story of Jesus hear the good news, perhaps for the first time, and are invited to become followers of Jesus. Then study centers can be places that embrace Jesus’ words, “As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”

To be sent is different from wandering or taking a stroll.
To be sent means there is a mission, a reason, a purpose, an objective to accomplish. How should this influence the way study centers think about sending in their engagement with students?

The place to start is helping students understand the difference between being sent and choosing a career.

Christian study centers, not university career centers, are places where followers of Jesus can learn to understand that they are sent out to be the aroma of Christ in the world.
Indeed, study centers are uniquely positioned to help college students understand that being sent is different from a career.
John Ortberg said that a calling is “something I do for God,”
while a career “threatens to become my god.”1

One of the most remarkable contributions of the Reformation was to recapture the idea that ordinary people, living ordinary lives, doing ordinary work, also are those to whom the word send applies.
In line with this, for most students engaged with a study center, being sent will not mean to the foreign mission field; it will not mean seminary; it will not mean going on staff with a parachurch organization.

It will mean taking a job with General Mills or Deloitte, with Wells Fargo or Pfizer, with the Metropolitan Museum of Art or Black & Decker.

Preparing to send is a special role a study center can play at a college or university.
It prepares followers of Jesus to be sent to all the corners of the earth, to full-time ministry and to the marketplace, knowing that in both instances they are being sent on mission.

Another metaphor I hear describing the Center for Christian Study at the University of Virginia is that of a hub. The center is a physical hub where other Christian ministries are welcome to meet with students for conversation and coffee, for prayer and Bible study.
Often UVA students will say, “I’ll meet you at the Stud.” The center also serves as a source of synergy with other Christian ministries. It does not compete with them but rather complements them. Some parachurch ministries that do not have a physical space have used office space at the center.

One more word that should describe the DNA of Christian study centers is irenic.
Indeed, a theme of Cotherman’s book is that study centers are to be marked by relational warmth and hospitality as well as making followers of Jesus and sending them on mission. Part of the genius of Schaeffer and Houston and their spouses was developing a physical place where mind and heart came together.

Dozens of Christian study centers—often adjacent to universities—now dot the continent.
This book is the first to tell us how and why.

(i added some line spacing to help me with reading. nothing more.)

[Ernie]

What are the major themes.

1. How a few visionaries wrestled with the challenge to help Evangelicals engage their culture rather than retreat from it.
2. The behind the scenes efforts (and sometimes conflicts and competition) of a few influential men and women who tried various ways of educating the Evangelical world in lay apologetics.
3. A history of the different models for educating lay apologists and how this shifts depending on the zeitgeist.
4. The author subtly leads the reader to understand some of pitfalls and mistakes people and organizations made along the way.

[barnhart]

What are the major themes.

1. How a few visionaries wrestled with the challenge to help Evangelicals engage their culture rather than retreat from it.
2. The behind the scenes efforts (and sometimes conflicts and competition) of a few influential men and women who tried various ways of educating the Evangelical world in lay apologetics.
3. A history of the different models for educating lay apologists and how this shifts depending on the zeitgeist.
4. The author subtly leads the reader to understand some of pitfalls and mistakes people and organizations made along the way.

Interesting. I should probably read the book before commenting. I've had a push/pull relationship with Schaeffer since reading How Shall We Then Live as a teenager. I love his engagement of culture but question the turn it took.

In some ways he is the counterpart to Dreher's "Benedict Option". I like Dreher's recommendations but question his motives and I question Shaffer's recommendations but appreciate his motives.

[Ernie]

What are the major themes.

1. How a few visionaries wrestled with the challenge to help Evangelicals engage their culture rather than retreat from it.
2. The behind the scenes efforts (and sometimes conflicts and competition) of a few influential men and women who tried various ways of educating the Evangelical world in lay apologetics.
3. A history of the different models for educating lay apologists and how this shifts depending on the zeitgeist.
4. The author subtly leads the reader to understand some of pitfalls and mistakes people and organizations made along the way.

Interesting. I should probably read the book before commenting. I've had a push/pull relationship with Schaeffer since reading How Shall We Then Live as a teenager. I love his engagement of culture but question the turn it took.

In some ways he is the counterpart to Dreher's "Benedict Option". I like Dreher's recommendations but question his motives and I question Shaffer's recommendations but appreciate his motives.

Interesting.

[temporal1]

What are the major themes.

1. How a few visionaries wrestled with the challenge to help Evangelicals engage their culture rather than retreat from it.
2. The behind the scenes efforts (and sometimes conflicts and competition) of a few influential men and women who tried various ways of educating the Evangelical world in lay apologetics.
3. A history of the different models for educating lay apologists and how this shifts depending on the zeitgeist.
4. The author subtly leads the reader to understand some of pitfalls and mistakes people and organizations made along the way.

Interesting. I should probably read the book before commenting. I've had a push/pull relationship with Schaeffer since reading How Shall We Then Live as a teenager. I love his engagement of culture but question the turn it took.

In some ways he is the counterpart to Dreher's "Benedict Option". I like Dreher's recommendations but question his motives and I question Shaffer's recommendations but appreciate his motives.

Just from reading the description+forward, the attraction is the intent to seek Jesus’ authentic message, not to be distracted by criticizing what “others did wrong!” Jesus did not waste time that way.

Of course, without reading, no conclusion can be made. But, this is the initial attraction.
i’m interested, because i think this is Ernie’s motivation - and he’s read it!

i’ve stopped in a very few Christian reading centers. i never thought of them as a movement.
Christian Scientists are known for having them, esp near campuses. i stopped in a Christadelphian center once. also near a university campus. they do make them warm, relaxed, inviting.
(i’m not sure if these sorts are even mentioned in this book.) a person has to be cautious to not become enlisted into something unwanted. it’s impossible to “regulate” heart and spirit.

Oddly enough, my brief step with Christian Scientists led me directly to studying scriptures and then being baptized (as a Lutheran). i did not read their special books by Mary Baker Eddy.
aside from that, their approach to Bible study was helpful. (i used NIV and KJV side by side at that time.)

i was shy about admitting i’d studied some with Christian Scientists.
the pastor who baptized me asked where my interest in Jesus began? i didn’t want to say.
when i did, he said, i think wisely, “there are many doors that open to Jesus. the important thing is to choose one, He will welcome you and guide you from there.”

i think that’s right. authentic believers are constantly growing in faith. for life, and Life.
so. begin. then follow Him.

[Bootstrap]

What are the major themes.

1. How a few visionaries wrestled with the challenge to help Evangelicals engage their culture rather than retreat from it.
2. The behind the scenes efforts (and sometimes conflicts and competition) of a few influential men and women who tried various ways of educating the Evangelical world in lay apologetics.
3. A history of the different models for educating lay apologists and how this shifts depending on the zeitgeist.
4. The author subtly leads the reader to understand some of pitfalls and mistakes people and organizations made along the way.

Interesting. I should probably read the book before commenting. I've had a push/pull relationship with Schaeffer since reading How Shall We Then Live as a teenager. I love his engagement of culture but question the turn it took.

In some ways he is the counterpart to Dreher's "Benedict Option". I like Dreher's recommendations but question his motives and I question Shaffer's recommendations but appreciate his motives.

I'm in a similar place, so I just bought the Kindle edition. Maybe anyone who reads it can post thoughts and questions as they go?

[MaxPC]

Interesting. I should probably read the book before commenting. I've had a push/pull relationship with Schaeffer since reading How Shall We Then Live as a teenager. I love his engagement of culture but question the turn it took.

In some ways he is the counterpart to Dreher's "Benedict Option". I like Dreher's recommendations but question his motives and I question Shaffer's recommendations but appreciate his motives.

This a a wonderful example of what I view as God’s Toolbox: different individuals and movements have different callings and purposes in living and preaching the Gospel. Humans are far from perfect so no one individual or movement will meet every need.
1 Corinthians 12:21-26
21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you,” nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” 22 On the contrary, the parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and on those parts of the body that we think less honorable we bestow the greater honor, and our unpresentable parts are treated with greater modesty, 24 which our more presentable parts do not require. But God has so composed the body, giving greater honor to the part that lacked it, 25 that there may be no division in the body, but that the members may have the same care for one another. 26 If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.