By Sheryl Young
INDIAN TRAIL, N.C. – Ratio Christi (ratiochristi.org) announces a change in the subtitle of our name from “Student Apologetics Alliance” to “Campus Apologetics Alliance.” This change includes an ambitious initiative called “RC Prof,” and introduces a new section at the Ratio Christi website as an outreach to college and university professors.
President/ CEO Corey Miller explains: “This represents our efforts to reach the whole campus for Christ, including the most influential people on campus – no longer only undergraduates, but professors and graduate students who are possible future professors. We cannot effectively win campuses by merely focusing on undergraduates. Specifically, if you win the current or future professor, then you win their classroom and the type of influence they will be on their students for the next thirty years.”
The RC Prof website feature contains videos of “Professors Who are Confessors” going public with their faith at major universities, as well as videos called “Prof Talks” that serve as a model by professors and for professors of what it might look like to be a fully integrated Christian professor in one’s field. There will also be links and resources to aid the current and future professors for their vocation. Additionally, for the first time, we’re offering a Faculty Track as part of this year’s national RC Symposium, taking place October 17-18 in Fort Mill, South Carolina.
Miller continues: “Over ninety percent of the original universities in the United States were grounded in Christian thought. For example, Brown, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton all originated as ministry and missionary training grounds and with Christian mottos – some still engraved on their buildings. Yet today they’ve become secular bastions of liberalism with professors writing anti-faith books, universities condoning activities like “Sex Week,” and well-known philosophers like Princeton’s Peter Singer who contemplates the merits of bestiality and infanticide.
“Most world leaders, journalists, teachers, politicians, and future professors are trained and influenced by professors. Many of these leaders earn a college degree from an American university. We can say ‘as goes the university, so goes the culture; and as goes the U.S. university, so goes the world.’ We dare not neglect this mission field if we wish to take back the university for Christ.”