Spotlight: Fall 2001

We don’t bite . . .

“‘It appears that most non-evangelicals have little more to fear from the majority of ordinary evangelicals than being thought of as spiritually or morally mistaken, and thus prayed for, shown a life of good example, and occasionally offered a word about one’s relationship to God. . . . These may be things that non-evangelicals would prefer to do without. But they are hardly views and practices that threaten civil American pluralism and democracy.’ So writes Christian Smith in Christian America? What Evangelicals Really Want (University of California Press). On the basis of his research, sociologist Smith concludes that, for most evangelicals, ‘Christian America’ means, for all practical purposes, the American Way of Life, including the Bill of Rights, balance of powers, and the commandment to be nice to people. Not very exciting. Not very threatening either.”

—Richard John Neuhaus in First Things, December 2000

Honestly now . . .

A Management Department study at Rutgers University in New Jersey recently looked at honor codes and student cheating at colleges and universities. Reviewing data involving 12,000 students during the last decade, the study found 47 percent of students at non-honor code schools admitted to cheating, while the corresponding rate at approximately 100 schools with honor codes was less than 25 percent. . . .

Application of the code also is on the rise. Several years ago, the UVA honor code committee heard less than a half-dozen cases [of violating the code] a year. However, in 1999, there were 160 incidents submitted for review.

Two major Florida schools also have turned to honor codes to keep cheating under control. The University of Miami adopted an honor system in 1986, while the University of Florida established its program a decade later.

At Miami, a sense of community “shame” is said to contribute to honor system success. There, accounts of student honor code violations are published in the student newspaper to deter other students from making the same mistakes. School officials think the publishing of offenses helps stop freshmen, who may have cheated in high school, from continuing the practice while at UM.

—National On-Campus Report, May 15, 2001.

Do-it-yourself Faith

“The popularity of being ‘spiritual, not religious’ also suggests that large and probably growing numbers of Americans now individually customize their religious faith. This trend should give us pause. A new book by Bobbi Parish is called Creating Your Personal Sacred Text. The book is a ‘step-by-step guide to writing your own Scripture,’ using selections from various texts of your choice as well as ‘your own words.’ More and more in our society, instead of the thing defining me, I define the thing. When the thing in question is, say, marriage, the trend is troubling enough. But have God and the moral law also become my own private creations?”

—David Blankenhorn in Propositions, the newsletter of the Institute for American Values, Summer 2000, quoted by Martin Marty in Context, January 1, 2001.

More but less?

“We can talk on the phone as we eat fast food while using the ATM. Not only are we better at multi-tasking and becoming more productive and efficient, along with the increased pace more is required of us. And so we hurtle through life faster and faster, becoming busier and busier. The result is that in our busyness we are becoming increasingly efficient at leading meaningless lives.”

—Seminary professor Don Whitney in MinistryToolBox, April 4, 2001, taken from Current Thoughts & Trends, August 2001.

Hurry up and play!

Not surprisingly, the rush of modern life has begun to spill over, even into the ways we play. I thought about this recently on a leisurely bike ride along the Evanston [IL] lakefront. Around me zoomed bikers hunched over sleek machines, dressed like Flash Gordon. I imagined they were officially playing while simultaneously getting in their prescribed 30 minutes of three-times-weekly aerobic exercise. No wasting the day here.

It’s hard to blame people. Our high tech life combined with the accelerated pace and insecurity of the modern workplace have fostered a culture that seems to be always working, always rushed, always (at least electronically) connected. In this environment play becomes frivolous. . . .

I say, let’s pretend we’ve created a world where we all work reasonable schedules with plenty of time to laugh and play and just enjoy each other. . . . Let’s pretend we’ve created a less strife-torn world, one in which we’ve learned to relax more and mistreat each other less.

Mark Harris in Conscious Choice, October 1999, quoted in the Utne Reader, March-April 2001.