Out of 2,618 accredited colleges and universities, you ended up here. Why? There are lots of great things about this school, but Houghton is a Christian campus in the middle of the woods. Our world is so small I sometimes feel more like a cloistered nun than a college student. Some of us feel like we are missing out on the “American College Experience” and others have become disenchanted with the Church and its “Christian” institutions. Others of us are feel a strain under the lack of diversity of religious backgrounds, wondering to ourselves “How is going to a school filled with people who believe similar things going to help me function in the real world?” So what’s the point? Honestly, why stay and engage in a place that lacks parties, religious diversity, and a decent grocery store?
The answer, like most things in my life, starts with some nerdy history. Imagine yourself as a young student in Berlin in 1933, the year Hitler becomes the democratically elected chancellor of Germany. You don’t have the slightest inkling of the atrocities that this man is about to commit. In fact, by all accounts, he has given you and your country hope that none of you have felt anything like in your lifetime. Your university is flourishing with ideas and your church is vibrant.
Flash forward to 1938: the hope you once felt has been replaced by fear, some of your favorite professors have been arrested, books burned, Jews slaughtered, and the theology of your once vibrant church has melted into madness. Where meekness and sacrifice were once valued, there is now to be ruthlessness and aggressive strength. The Nazarene rabbi you knew as Christ has been recast as a “goose-stepping, strudel loving son of the Reich” and His people rounded up and killed like animals. You are disturbed by what you see and know to be wrong, but if you speak out you will be killed. What do you do?
Well, if you are Dietrich Bonhoeffer, you start an underground seminary where your students can anchor themselves to a vision of justice and compassion in the midst of a storm of hate and violence. You create a space that doesn’t just foster young minds, but also requires empowered action from them. This is why it is worth it to be here. Because here we have a chance in integrate our studies with a worldview that demands that captives be released, that the blind see, that the oppressed be set free.
A Christian college is not meant to be a place where we are cloistered and hide behind our bibles. A Christian college is not meant to be a place where we retreat and leave the “heathen” culture to damn itself. A Christian college, like this college, is where we align our studies with a worldview that values the vulnerable, that demands more than just our best wishes for humanity, that grips us with the reality that we are commanded by Christ to institute a kingdom of compassion and love using the minds that we have been given. Being a part of a Christian college doesn’t mean forgoing your voice in society or culture; in fact, it means the opposite. It means crying out even louder for justice because we are not only driven by personal motivation, but by a clear vision for the kingdom of Heaven.
The seminary that Bonhoeffer started taught students who would go on to join various resistance groups, preach vehemently against the Nazis, and reinstate the true church after the war. Christian colleges didn’t just impact them as individuals. It changed the German church, and it called for society to change its course. We still need that today. If there is not value in a place that can marry a vision of justice and peace with the intellectual tools of the academy, then I am not sure there is value in anything.
Kyla is a sophomore majoring in intercultural studies.