Campus Ministry: Colorado Style
A unprecedented crowd gathered for a debate between Christopher Hitchens and Dinesh D’Souza at the University of Colorado at Boulder on Monday night. A sold out crowd of 2,050 filled Macky auditorium and 300 had to watch on video beamed to another building on campus.
(For those of you not familiar with the Colorado scene, Boulder and Colorado Springs popularly represent the ying and yang of spirituality here. Boulder is a kind of Seattle-in-the-Rockies: hostile to historic forms of western faith and entranced by all and any alternate spiritualities as well as the rejection of faith altogether. Colorado Springs is - famously or notoriously, take your pick - home to over 100 evangelical Protestant organizations including Focus on the Family, Young Life, the Navigators, the International Bible Society, etc.
We all know the drill. The "Land of None" vs the Bible belt. )
The debate, moderated by Denver radio talk show host Dan Caplis, was sponsored by the St. Thomas Aquinas Center for Catholic Thought, an intellectual outreach program of St. Thomas Aquinas Parish in Boulder, Colorado. The event centered on the theme “What’s so Great about God? – Atheism vs. Religion.”
Father Kevin Augustyn, pastor of St. Thomas Aquinas Parish, prefaced the debate, saying, “As Catholics, we are not afraid of intellectual debate. Faith and reason are not opposed to each other.”
And they are living this conviction in very interesting ways. Take a look at their spring, 2009 lecture series.
The two priests in residence are young, the staff high-powered, and the parish website features two blogs. This is *not* "don't ask, don't tell" Catholicism. Campus ministry confidently reaching out in a way intelligently geared to Boulder's unique situation and culture. Thank God!
Read about the details of the debate here.
posted by Sherry W @ 6:35 AM
2 Comments
Links to this post
2 Comments:
Wow: does this ever bring back memories!
I spent a couple of years at the U of Co, teaching physics and getting invovled with an early form of lay Catholic campus ministry from '66-'68. It was a different time. "God was dead", according to TIME magazine, the V-Nam war was starting up, Vatican Council II had opened a Pandora's box among Catholics. And the first experiences of the Catholic Pentecostal Movement (aka Catholic charismatic renewal) had blown through the campus at CU.
I'm encouraged to see that the FOCUS organization is active on the Boulder campus. They're also involved with the campus ministry at two univerisities in Denver.
Anyone interested in campus ministry might visit the FOCUS site at http://www.focusonline.org/
Peace,
Ed Keefe
Wow: does this ever bring back memories!
I spent a couple of years at the U of Co, teaching physics and getting invovled with an early form of lay Catholic campus ministry from '66-'68. It was a different time. "God was dead", according to TIME magazine, the V-Nam war was starting up, Vatican Council II had opened a Pandora's box among Catholics. And the first experiences of the Catholic Pentecostal Movement (aka Catholic charismatic renewal) had blown through the campus at CU.
I'm encouraged to see that the FOCUS organization is active on the Boulder campus. They're also involved with the campus ministry at two univerisities in Denver.
Anyone interested in campus ministry might visit the FOCUS site at http://www.focusonline.org/
Peace,
Ed Keefe
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home