Josh, Nate and I just returned from a great conference in Boston University, titled The Opening of the Evangelical Mind, it featured eminent scholars (Mark Noll and Alvin Plantinga, for instance) commenting on the recent renaissance in evangelical thought and activity within the academy.
The organizers specifically set aside an hour for student journals to come together and converse on the nuts and bolts of getting a Christian periodical written by and for college students off the ground. We were there specifically for this session, eager to meet and network.
It was encouraging to see Dartmouth and Harvard going strong and graciously offering advice for the rest of us who were on the cusp of publishing our first issue. Their magazines, Apologia and Ichthus respectively, are representative of the recent groundswell in student publications espousing and discussing Christianity.
So we did what any college student does when meeting other college kids – exchange emails, promise to become friends on Facebook, and talk.
And there was much to talk about, especially after an optimistic and well-moderated panel at the Law Auditorium of BU. A combination of younger academics sat beside the guard like Plantinga and Noll and offered insight on the use of power by Christians, the centrality of love alongside the presentation of truth, and the problem with labels.
Indeed, I look forward to working alongside other journals to present the person of Christ to our universities in word, text and art.