Here’s the second part of Karl Stevens’ article for Episcopal Cafe. You can read the whole article by following this link.
What can parishes do for students? And how can those of us who specialize in campus ministry help parishes engage with the students in their midsts?
To begin with, campus ministers need to understand that a big part of their role is to act as translators between the classroom and the pews. Scholars are always figuring out new ways to encounter the world, or digging in the past to show that the innovations that seem so frightening are actually based on very old questions. A few months ago I went to a talk given by Don Hubin, a philosophy professor at OSU. Don was talking about the way in which new social phenomena tap into very old questions, and he used Grand Theft Auto to raise this question: do the things we do in our imaginations matter in the world outside of our imaginations? There’s a whole philosophical and theological tradition built around this single question. Imagine what it would be like if parish priests were able to speak from that tradition to every grandmother who’s worried that her grandson is playing Grand Theft Auto? The academy is often more tuned-in to real world concerns than the church is, and one way in which we can learn to turn our gaze to the world outside our parish doors is by following the academy’s lead.