Veritas Forum
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Veritas Forum is a non-profit organization that works with Christian students on college campuses to host lectures and forums dealing with questions of philosophy and religion. Veritas seeks to place the person of Jesus and Christian teachings alongside those of other world views in the academy. The organization provides a space where students and other members of the community can explore truth and its application to their lives.
To this end, Veritas asks Christian student groups at a university to meet together to determine the structure of a forum. These groups then work with other student groups and academic departments on the campus, and together with the national Veritas organization, organize and host a forum. Typical events include evening keynote addresses, workshops, debates, and discussions. Common topics include the existence of God; the relationship between science and religion; social justice work; questions of social ethics, such as homosexuality, abortion, pornography, and euthanasia; feminism and women's issues; questions of meaning or purpose in human life, evil, or beauty; human sexuality and relationships; the existence of objective truth; religion and art; Christianity and popular culture; and the historical validity of the Bible.
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[edit] History
The first forum took place at Harvard University in 1992 and took its name from Harvard's motto, Veritas, meaning Truth [1]. Originally, the motto reflected Harvard's Christian roots, and was rendered "Veritas in Christi Gloriam," truth for the glory of Christ, and later "Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae," truth for Christ and the church. At the first Veritas Forum writers of the book Finding God at Harvard gathered to share their own questions, sufferings, journeys, and discoveries with the Harvard community. After this founding forum at Harvard, forums spread to Ohio State, the University of Virginia, Yale and eventually across the country to Berkeley, Stanford, and UCLA. The Veritas Forum seeks to remind the university community of central of Christ to its founding and to reignite an exploration of Christianity as a viable answer to the questions of life and the academy.
[edit] Institutions Involved
As of the 2006-2007 academic year, 250,000 students have attended over 200 forums at 80 campuses around the United States and in Europe. These include:
Harvard University
Yale University
Columbia University
Swarthmore College
Eastern University
Williams College
Wesleyan University
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
University of California, Santa Cruz
University of Ohio
University of Tennessee
Georgetown University
Hope College
Texas A&M University
Oxford University
Cambridge University
Princeton University
Stanford University
University of California, Los Angeles
University of Virginia
United States Military Academy
University of California, Santa Barbara
University of Michigan
University of Kentucky
University of Louisville
Rice University
University of California, Berkley
Ohio State University
Northwestern University
University of Southern California
Duke University
New York University
University of North Carolina at Asheville
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Bryn Mawr College
Haverford College
University of Pennsylvania
California State University, Fresno
Brown University
Rhode Island School of Design
[edit] Past Speakers
Speakers for Veritas Forums have included:
David Aikman
Denis Alexander
John Stapleford
Jeremy Begbie
Craig Blomberg
J. Budziszewski
Francis Collins
Matthew Connolly
William Lane Craig
Calvin DeWitt
William Edgar
Owen Gingerich
Peter Gomes
Os Guinness
Gary Habermas
Jars of Clay
Tom Key
Peter Kreeft
Bruce Kuhn
Madeline L'Engle
George Marsden
Frederica Mathewes-Green
Alister McGrath
Donald Miller
J.P. Moreland
Richard John Neuhaus
Armand Nicholi
Alvin Plantinga
John Polkinghorne
Jeffrey Sachs
Fritz Schaefer
James W. Sire
John Stott
Dallas Willard
Lauren Winner
Nicholas Wolterstorff
N.T. Wright
Ravi Zacharias
[edit] Books and Media
Veritas' website has a media library [2] with free lectures on topics pertinent to the academic and personal lives of university students.
Veritas Forum Books [3] seek to provide academically engaging, culturally relevant and distinctively Christian points of view to the public. Current titles include Finding God at Harvard and Finding God Beyond Harvard, both by Veritas' founder Kelly Monroe Kullberg, and The Dawkins Delusion, by Alister McGrath.
[edit] Links
The Veritas Forum website [4]
Local media coverage of forum events at:
Swarthmore College: Cambridge professor bridges world of science and faith [5]
Columbia University [6]
Harvard University [7]
Hope College [8]
Stanford [9]
UCLA [10]
An article by Chuck Colson on The Veritas Forum [11]
