Gary B. King Guest Columnist
Ratio Christi, a Latin term that means “the reason for Christ,” according to its website, “is a global movement that equips university students and faculty to give historical, philosophical and scientific reasons for following Christ. Bringing together faith and reason to establish the intellectual voice of Christ in the University, Ratio Christi is planting student and faculty-led apologetics clubs at universities around the world.”
Ratio Christi wants equal recognition.
Like other student clubs, Ratio Christi would like to enjoy the same recognition and accommodations other student clubs enjoy. Student clubs must register with each university to secure the benefits of club status, and each school can set the terms for registering.
The University of Colorado at Colorado Springs has denied Ratio Christi registered status unless it allows “atheists and other non-Christians to lead their Bible studies.” While Ratio Christi welcomes all students to attend its meetings, membership is extended to those who support its purpose, and leadership is reserved to those who share its beliefs.
The University of Colorado’s denial of club status to Ratio Christi is not the first instance of a university dictating terms of registration so asinine that it effectively excludes their recognition on campus. The Alliance Defending Freedom has filed a lawsuit on behalf of Ratio Christi.
Two thoughts come to my mind: the first is something Saul Bellow wrote in his foreword of Professor Allan Bloom’s book “The Closing of the American Mind.” Saul wrote, “Professor Bloom’s book makes me fear that the book of the world, so richly studied by autodidacts, is being closed by the ‘learned’ who are raising walls of opinions to shut the world out.” In this instance, the “learned” are shutting out the Christian worldview.
As Tim Keller has trenchantly pointed out, “everybody is operating out of a set of faith beliefs that cannot be empirically proven.” That being true, why would a university try to effectively exclude the Christian worldview from the marketplace of competing ideas? Are the “learned” afraid of a few students with Bibles in their book bags?
Atheists revel in the sophistic rationale of the late Stephen Hawking who said, “Religion is a fairy tale for adults afraid of the dark.” Hawking did not believe in an afterlife, and that belief is something for which atheists have no empirical evidence.
Of course, believers, and I am sure Ratio Christi, prefer the logic of English professor of mathematics Dr. John Lennox who said, “Atheism is a fairy tale for adults who are afraid of the light.” Lennox echoed Christ who declared, “This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil,” (John 3:19)
My second thought is the darkness of atheism cannot compete with the Light of Christianity. That is why the “learned” must extinguish it by silencing it.
When the educated refuse to accept the knowledge of God they fulfill Paul’s words, “Professing to be wise, they became fools,”
(Romans 1:22)