Post date: Apr 05, 2016 5:57:41 PM
to-do
blog
set up proxes
set up Sam
NM prep
check flight
SENT EMAIL - Kersemeier permission email
SENT TO VESTRY- posters, general LCF
DONE- order stuff from IV - shirts (no red cup shirts available), start something new books
4 MON
fixed phone system, nomorobo -- see computer log
emailed re seniors
emailed sam
looked more into t-shirts -> note on FVTC leaders mtg
cleaned up desk, filed folders
5 TUE
called Oneida re: internship -> oneida research site, emailed Dyson
pictures
GIG / 2W
Ellen - 2 sessions, overview & your life in 2W
Laura - 1 session, overview
Kelsie - interested, didn't come yet
Aaden - maybe
Eddie - interested
Neil - maybe
6 WED
NM prep
mtg w/ Megan
Willie not coming to NAIITS, Eric S. Reannin maybe thinking about going.
holo hepono in four courners. -- Ho’olohe Pono, LiSteN--learn and serve in Navajoland (Tony Bigey, Celeste called it that)
Long-range plan people: Megan, Maureen, Brennan, Debbie
WE don't have enough stuff -- too much transition -- for Maureen and Megan,
NM Coordinator
Alum graphic artist (AA, IV alum, Cornell) Jenny Como knew .
Megan priorities -- developing native staff candidates. Urbana.
What is NAIITS good for? 1. on list of experiences we want staff to have. 2. Ray Aldridge (2003) Urbana, Terry L., Richard Twiss, Cheryl, .
LL Maureen will be director of Native, White, Multiethnic, Megan coord?, me resourcing
worked on An Open Letter to Dean of Religious Life Candidates SEE LINK OF UPDATED VERSION
Lawrence has posted a job description for the new Dean of Spiritual and Religious Life (DS&RL). We appreciate what President Burstein and the Lawrence University leadership have done in acknowledging some long-standing issues at Lawrence, their initiative in addressing them, as well as the generous gift from the Hurvis family.
Since the Lawrence Christian Fellowship (LCF) is currently the largest and oldest student group of religiously interested students, we hope a perspective from some of our leaders will be a welcome supplement to information given on the DS&RL job description about our situation.
LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY
We are proud to be part of Lawrence for all the reasons cited in the job description. We are also proud to be part of Lawrence because all those wonderful traits and distinctives were set in motion and funded by people who hold essentially the same beliefs that we do in LCF. Lawrence was founded to bring glory to God and deepen devotion to our savior Jesus Christ [**prob best to get this in LU's own wording]. We in LCF hope that we will be able to put our faith into action in similarly noble ways. The Christian heritage of Lawrence is not widely known, rarely acknowledged, and in the minds of some Lawrencians, inimical to what the University is now all about. This is not a claim that everything that Christians have done in the past is good. That would be a false claim. We just wish, in the interest of intellectual and historical integrity, to give credit where credit is due.
In LCF we believe that Jesus is worthy of our greatest effort. Following Jesus is not the "spiritual compartment" of our lives. We wish to live lives of integrity, where the moral and relational parts of our lives, as well as the intellectual parts, are all integrated in intentional lives of service to God in Jesus.
LAWRENCE CHRISTIAN FELLOWSHIP
In 1959, a couple years before Julie Hurvis graduated, several students founded LCF with the help of an itinerating campus minister. LCF was founded as (and continues to be) a member chapter of a nation-wide student movement called InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, affiliated with similar Christian student movements around the world through the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (the IFES).
LCF has received help and support form IV for many years, but also (and especially) from Christian faculty and staff at the University. Professor Ken Bozeman, to name one, has served as an advisor for LCF for over 35 years. In addition, many local churches have supported LCF students over the years (many of these through LU alumni at the churches). Other parachurch groups also serve LCFers, like His House, Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and Young Life.
Before LCF there were other Christian groups, such as the Oxford Club, the YMCA and YWCA. God has been faithful to his people at Lawrence over the years. While we complain about Lawrence sometimes, it would be wrong of us to neglect to offer gratitude for all the love and support we have had. Almost all of this has been offered to us without pay, honorariums, honors, compensation for expenses incurred, or any other earthly benefit.
From a small start, LCF grew to be over 100 students in the late 70s. In the early 2000s, the group was nearly 80. LCF has rarely involved fewer than 25 or 30 students. LCF is also active. In addition to weekly leader and worship ("large group") meetings, we have usually had several weekly small group Bible studies, prayer meetings or leadership development meetings. We typically have a chapter retreat each term and participate in regional and national InterVarsity and His House conferences or missions trips.
While this is clearly not the intent, the DS&RL document could be read to imply that there is very little going on at Lawrence spiritually and religiously, or that interest in these things is a new thing at Lawrence. There are...
BACKGROUND (idea to "supplement" each section of the job description)
Many of the comments on the campus climate survey were from Christian students.
We welcome well-designed supports from Lawrence University in terms of leadership and voluntary programming. We also believe that Lawrence benefits from a robust form pluralism, in which students sometimes disagree and even work at cross-purposes, and even risk offending one another at times because truth is more important than comfort. We do not hope for a "safe" Lawrence in which we can be a protected religious enclave at the expense of a genuine and consequential voice on this campus.
It has become fashionable for student groups on campus to issue a list of demands to the university. We believe they raise legitimate concerns, so we don't want to minimize or mock the motivations behind these efforts. However, issuing demands is not really a Christian style (at least, not on the example of the Lord Jesus Christ, *refgospels/Jesus before authorities, and apostle Paul ref*1Cor). So instead a of a list of demands we submit a list of of discussion questions (and then wonder, at times, which is more threatening to the status quo).:
-- A Christian finds herself in a group of friends who don't know she is a Christian. After repeatedly enduring what she feels to be insults to her faith or situations in which she feels compromised, she eventually works up the courage to come out of the closet to her friends. She is not celebrated. Instead she is met with uncomfortable silence. What are the underlying dynamics that drive this (not uncommon) scenario?
-- Is Lawrence a place that can intellectually entertain the possibility of an alternative view of healthy human sexuality, an alternative view of tolerance, a difference view of what makes for human happiness and flourishing, ..
-- When a student or professor makes a claim in class that is contrary to a fundamental element of Christian faith and (1) is not aware, or does not express awareness, of this, (2) does not provide or consider entertaining a credible contrary view, or (3) provides no reason or justification at all (that is, the claim is tossed out as an "aside"), does such an action constitute a micro-aggression? Why or why not?
-- When a professor or student demonstrates a great deal of concern and sensitivity over a proper use of pronouns, over terms that may be regarded as a racial slur, or avoiding implications that might dishonor a particular religion (such as, for example, taking care to dissociate religious-sounding statements of a terrorist group from mainstream Islam), BUT does not seem to demonstrate a similar sensitivity to Christians, Christianity, or ideas and issues of concern to Christians, what are the possible sub-texts of this omission? What can this omission imply about power differences, societal approval or intellectual plausibility?
-- Why is there a disproportionately low percentage of "historically orthodox/conservative/evangelical" Christians at Lawrence in comparison to the larger society? Assume as a test case such a student who is intellectually and academically qualified and considers Lawrence the top possibility before visiting. What might this student "pick up on" in a brief campus visit that would cause this student to enroll elsewhere?
-- Lawrence has arguably benefited a great deal from a group of Christian people who founded, funded, inspired, maintained, sacrificed for, and advanced this institution for many years for explicitly Christian reasons (though, of course, Lawrence is no longer an officially Christian institution). If, despite this benefit, Lawrence does not acknowledge or honor the contribution of these people (even though like-minded students still participate in the institution) does this constitute an example of cultural appropriation? Is the prevailing campus attitude towards religion a fruit of a secular colonization?
-- In the view of Christian students, non-Christian students and even professors often make statements that demonstrate ignorance of even basic teachings of Jesus or positions held by Christians, yet at the same time give the impression that they have assessed Christianity and found it intellectually deficient, irrelevant, outdated, or even morally perverse. What might motivate such easy dismissal? What constitutes adequate grounds for dismissal? What constitutes bias or prejudicial dismissal?
-- What does "spirituality" even mean? Please discuss the meaning of this term. Please entertain a definition that is not radically individualistic and relativistic, deistic, and vague to a point that defies analysis. In a small group of people, try to find some consensus about what the terms "religion" and "spirituality" mean. How might a Christian definition of those terms be different?
-- Christians report encountering Jesus in some way, often through his teachings and the community he inspires, often through more mysterious ways that are perhaps more akin to an existential or aesthetic experience. What deep human longings do you think Jesus appeals to? What liberation, healing, empowerment or enlightenment does he provide?
-- What reasons do you suppose motivate some students to become followers of Jesus, even in a context like Lawrence where following Jesus is misunderstood, unfashionable, politically incorrect or carries some other form of disapproval or disadvantage?
-- Assume the validity of a Platonic-like division. On one side are things like important facts, defensible knowledge, science, things that should be funded, or voted on, or reasonably argued in the public sphere. On the other side are opinions, options, matters of taste and style, artifacts of cultural heritage that bring color, private prerogative. Which side does "religion and spirituality" go with? How consequential, really, is "religion and spirituality"? Are religious or spiritual people wise or experts in anything except their own views, anything that matters?
-- What is the difference between a religious view and a foundational element in a worldview? How are such things defended? It that possible? A religious student might claim that "secular" or non-religious students hold views that are essentially religious, that is, they have a comparable epistemic status. In other words, everyone has what is basically a religion. Would this view level the playing field? What if everyone were to assess and defend his or her foundational beliefs about life and the world and ultimate reality and destiny (etc.)?
-- Arguably, many come to Lawrence having been educated in a public system of education that is so paralyzed by its inability to deal with matters of religion that vacuous slogans like "separation of church and state" have been employed to shut down any substantive discussion of religious ideas, people or institutions (granted, Christians sometimes contribute to this state of paranoia). Is Lawrence taking on this system by having a DL&SL? Is such a path likely to bring harmony or discord? Is Lawrence willing to risk discord?
This list of discussions may bring us to the conclusion that
We get it. The "Job Posting" genre of literature is not one that hangs out dirty laundry or nails theses on a door. But it is also true that a well-meaning initiatives [can stir up important but unforeseen will be or even can be] We hope that Lawrence's desire to make Lawrence safe for religious people does not include a patronizing attitude towards the views or aspirations of religious people (who wants that job?),
(see old list "be nice to Christians" day on prezi)
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