Christian Youth in Social Action

Abstract

AS AN undergraduate and as one who has done professional work with students in the Christian Association pattern, I have felt that perhaps the major weakness of most campus religious programs is their failure to relate students in any significant way either with Christianity or with the Church. So much of the non-classroom religious work with students is on the superficial level of getting them acquainted with each other, or oriented to college life, or of discussing public affairs questions, or working in a settlement house or letting them hear a speaker; that we often do not get to grappling with them on the deeper levels. Largely secular and materialist as this student generation is, illiterate as it is about Christianity and its meaning for their lives and for the world, unacquainted as it is with the power and strength which come from private and public worship, we have frequently failed to meet their deepest needs and to help them where they most have needed help. Our campus religious programs have done a great deal of good, but not perhaps the most good or at the most important places. One sees this most clearly in the area of social action. It should be practically axiomatic that Christian social action is the fruit of Christian faith and Christian faith is the