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The most recent articles, videos, blog entries, and more that have been added to ChristianUnion.org.
Yale now offers so-called gender-neutral bathrooms to its student body. This decision comes amid recent national disputes over which bathroom people who claim to be transgendered ought to use. It also signals the university’s enthusiastic endorsement of the notion that sexual identity is “fluid” and contingent on the individual’s perspective, rather than biology.
A recent study from the American College of Pediatricians has found that teaching gender ideology in elementary schools psychologically hurts children. To understand gender ideology it is important to recognize an inherent contradiction between its dual goals. On the one hand, it seeks to erase any suggestion of biological distinctions between male and female. On the other hand, it reinforces some cultural roles by suggesting children can and should alter their sex to confirm to what “gender” they feel themselves to be, even to point of hormone treatment and surgical alteration. This ideology dangerously conflates biological sex and its differences with the variables attitudes and roles of the sexes within a society. But all evidence shows that allowing children to “choose their sex” at an age when they cannot fully understand what they are doing will confuse and harm them as they get older.
The spiritual disciplines allow us to become like Christ by teaching us to live in the same manner as He did. In an interview with Christianity Today, authors Philip Nation and David Mathis, discuss the spiritual disciplines and how we can implement them into our daily lives.
Students at Dartmouth are challenging two closely related, disturbing trends in higher education—the growth of bureaucracy and censorship. In a petition to the Dartmouth administration, five student government leaders and 1,200 signees expressed strong discontent with the ever-increasing number of non-faculty staff employed by the college. The number of non-faculty administrators has risen to 1,000 from 1999 to 2004 and then, despite faculty lay-offs, to 3,497 by 2015. This monumental staff increase has contributed to making the minimum cost $70,000 for a year at Dartmouth.
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Liberal academia claims to champion the progressive ideals of inclusion and diversity. Unfortunately, there exists a systematic discrimination against certain viewpoints, including conservatives and evangelical Christians in many colleges. As colleges pay lip-service to diversity, but discourage it in reality, it is students that lose out on experiencing genuine diversity of thought. Nicholas Kristof addresses this bias in a New York Times op-ed:
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 5:9). Though we live in a world filled with discord, we should take His exhortation to heart and through our peaceful dispositions, let our neighbors feel the positive impact of our Christian faith.
The environment at the nation’s leading universities is often academically intense, sometimes highly competitive, and highly secular. Prospective students and families considering the pros and cons of attending one of the nation’s top ranked schools are right to wonder if it will be difficult for freshmen who are Christian to stay strong in their faith. However, despite the real challenges they face, Christian students reflecting on their experiences report a wealth of opportunities to grow in their faith.
On May 6, 2016, Harvard University announced “members of independent, single-sex, off-campus organizations will be blacklisted from Rhodes and Marshall scholarships and banned from leadership of on-campus organizations or athletic teams.”
Prayer: one of the most powerful and puzzling aspects of Christianity. A prayer can range from a quick utterance to hours of dedicated intercession. Prayer is something that we can never do enough, yet there is no exact formula (even the Lord’s prayer is offered as a guide, not imposed as a rule). There are a rich variety of modes of prayer that can help believers enter into conscious, personal communion with God.