Most students come to college seeking to explore spiritual issues and the “big questions” of life. They would relish an honest dialogue with a Christian professor who helps them think through themes such as beauty, suffering and justice.
Unfortunately, too often they encounter instead atheist professors who are determined to talk them out of faith in God. One such professor has gone as far as to write A Manual for Creating Atheists, to equip his colleagues for this task.
Students at the University of Pennsylvania are fortunate to have law professor David Skeel available for these conversations. The Christian Legal Society advisor at Penn, Professor Skeel frequently speaks at Veritas Forums (and is publishing a book in fall 2014) on the subject of True Paradox: How Christianity Makes Sense of Our Complex World.
Veritas Forums are university events that engage students and faculty in discussions about life’s hardest questions and the modern relevance of Jesus Christ. Christian students and faculty at Penn work together to host these forums annually; they drafted Professor Skeel to serve as moderator for a well-attended event in 2012.
A year later, he served on a panel of Christian professors who offered a response to Richard Dawkins’ well-publicized appearance at Penn in 2013. His thoughtful feedback to Dawkins’ presentation resonated with many in the audience. “Atheists have great difficulty explaining many of the core puzzles of life,” Skeel explains, “such as why we experience beauty as reflecting something transcendent, why we have consciousness, etc. Dawkins doesn’t seem to me to have explanations for any of these things.”
One atheist student has maintained an on-going dialogue with Professor Skeel for the past two years. Another atheist student, in philosophy, found Skeel’s insights so helpful that he approached him after one of Skeel’s “True Paradox” talks. They met regularly over coffee in Professor Skeel’s office as the student considered Jesus’ claims. He recently became a Christian.
Students who attend Veritas Forums frequently say, “I wish we had more discussions like this on campus.” Fortunately for them, Professor Skeel—who became a Christian himself his junior year in college—feels called to provide such opportunities for them.
He finds joy in the steady stream of comments from (mostly Christian) students “who are encouraged by my presence in an environment where so few Christian professors exist.”