Campus Stirrings
This was published in the fall of 1995 in the Yale Standard.
Nothing quite like it had occurred at Yale for at least the last 30 years.
Bearing two guitars, a banjo, accordion, violin, and a few tambourines, a 20-member crew bunched behind a microphone on Cross Campus lawn late this past summer.
Mostly former or current Yalies, they attend classes during the week or work at law firms, hospitals, boarding schools, or biology laboratories. On this Saturday afternoon, however, they sang and spoke openly about what, to them, matters most.
“You may have heard that there is no God,” began Sharon Kim, Calhoun ’93 and Yale graduate student in English, “that God does not care about you, or that you can’t know Him. But those are lies. There is a God, He does care about you, and you can get to know Him. He sent his Son to die in our place, so that we would not have to die in our sin and go to hell.”
Seated on CCL’s ledge or lawn, or leaning over Berkeley’s South Court wall, students listened to the singing and to the half dozen who spoke. Passersby either joined them or walked by, several curious about what was going on, a few shaking their heads. Some politely refused the free Christian literature, while others—sometimes engaging briefly in conversation—accepted.
This was not the first time Yalies have preached on campus this century. At least since the 1960’s to the present, groups of four or five, as well as individuals, have shared the Gospel with students in college Common Rooms, the Old Campus, Beinecke Plaza, CCL lawn, or Woolsey rotunda. Students’ responses have ranged from conviction to hostility, the former perhaps more common near the start of this century.
“The class of 1909 graduated more Christian missionaries from Yale than any other before or since,” Philip Chamberlain, Branford ’70 and a banker on Wall Street, explained. “But in the years that followed, as the Social Gospel spread, as classes cycled through, the spiritual vigor was leached little by little. By the latter 1920’s there was little evidence of it left.”
Saturday’s preaching—perhaps one evidence of its potential return—follows less than half a year after campus-wide spiritual stirrings at other colleges (see the article, “At Evangelical Colleges, a Revival of Repentance,” The New York Times, Sunday, April 30, 1995, page 30).
“We want people to know Jesus—He’s the only one who can save,” Vivian Kim, Silliman ’96, replied when asked why she had come out to preach on CCL lawn. She and a few others plan to preach this coming year, as they have before. “Whether a large group goes out this year depends a lot on our willingness to share the Truth we’ve found. What’s exciting is that a lot of repentance and growth has been happening, and the preaching is a natural outcome of our growing relationship with the Lord.”
Harry Yoon, Berkeley ’93, Medicine ’98