Article August 13, 1927 Issue

Signs of the Times

with contributions from George E. Hunt, Frank Gustafson

[From the Christian Century, Chicago, Illinois]

Is the American college student of 1927 concerned with questions other than those which agitated the campus generation of three and your years ago? It begins to look that way. Three or four years ago when any considerable body of students came together for common counsel it was probable that the discussion would center on topics such as war, race, industrial conditions, and—occasionally—social relations on the campus. In those days students were threshing out their attitude toward any number of social issues, and if they recorded their convictions in test votes, the sensational press blazoned the results with gusto. It may have escaped notice, but, aside from student gatherings which are engineered by adult denominational leaders, there is not much voting going on in student gatherings these days. The newspapers are not finding much to report. The cause is not hard to find. Students are no longer spending much time discussing the sort of questions which make sensational copy. Instead, in a typical student gathering of the present year the "hot spot" is more likely than not to be a discussion as to the possibility of belief in God, and if belief is considered possible, the kind of God worthy of belief. Student conferences are becoming as theological as were ever the university commons rooms of the middle ages. Is this a good, or an evil, sign? If it meant that the students were no longer interested in the social issues which were up a few years ago it could hardly be regarded as altogether healthy. But a little contact with students will soon show that this is not the case. It is rather true that an increasing number of students demand a basis for faith, an immediate wrestling with the nature of the universe, and that they consider all other matters trivial until this is settled. When this is, so far as they are concerned, settled, then the answers to the other questions—whose importance they acknowledge—will be expected to fall into place without delay. This, too, is perhaps a passing phase of student thought, but it is an encouraging phase.

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