Faculty Commons SLO

Hope you can join us for a final get together before we all take off for the summer.

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Please save the date and plan on joining us for the “A Common Call” Christian faculty conference Saturday January 18, 2020. More details to follow.

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Shane Croucher 5/3/19 Newsweek Magazine

“A new report says that the persecution of Christians across the world is fast becoming genocide and that the faith will soon disappear in some areas of the world, even in locations where its presence dates back to antiquity.

The crisis was made apparent recently by the Sri Lanka attacks on Easter, when Islamic extremists targeted three churches and three hotels in Colombo in a series of bombings. The attacks killed 253 people and injured hundreds more.

The British government commissioned Bishop of Truro Philip Mounstephen to lead a review of persecution of Christians and to recommend how the U.K. Foreign Office should respond to it. That review has now published an interim report detailing its findings so far.

“Evidence shows not only the geographic spread of anti-Christian persecution, but also its increasing severity,” the report states. “In some regions, the level and nature of persecution is arguably coming close to meeting the international definition of genocide, according to that adopted by the UN.”

The entire article can be found here.

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Below is a link to the January 30, 2019 Cal Poly Veritas Forum, featuring Atheist presenter Dr. Herb Silverman and Christian presenter Dr. Karen Swallow Prior speaking on “Would Society Be Better Off Without Religion? An Atheist and a Christian Discuss”.

Enjoy. 

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Wednesday evening January 30, 2019 the Cal Poly Veritas Forum tackled the question “Would Society Be Better Off Without Religion? An Atheist and a Christian Discuss.”

Our guests were Dr. Herb Silverman (Mathematics, College of Charleston, and Founder of the Secular Collation for America) and Dr. Karen Swallow Prior (English, Liberty University, and author of On Reading Well: Finding the Good Life Through Great Books).

Many thanks to Religious Studies Professor, Dr. Stephen Lloyd-Moffett, who did an outstanding job moderating the event. 

The goal of the Veritas Forum is to “engage students and faculty in discussions on life’s most important questions – and the relevancy of Jesus Christ to all of life.” While the Veritas Forum is, of course, a Christian student organization – the desire is to help students and faculty engage with different beliefs and worldviews. 

If you’ve never been, we encourage you to consider attending. 

“A super thoughtful UCLA student was here at Cal Poly visiting friends, and decided to come. He really liked the Veritas Forum, and had a cool conversation afterwards. He and his friends met for coffee afterwards, continuing to talk about God and the Bible. He loved the Veritas Forum, as well as the Cru ministry tool “Perspectives” cards. He would not consider himself religious, but wanted to share this ministry tool with his roommates.” – Lizzie, Cru intern

“Our students love the Veritas Forum. What a great opportunity to engage with the campus! I just randomly invited a student named Daniel to the Forum. He said he couldn’t attend – but instead said he could come to our weekly student meeting. He came up to me after Cru, and thanked me. He was so grateful for the invitation.” – Jordan, Cru Cal Poly Campus Ministry director 

“I invited invited all my students to the Veritas Forum. It was wonderful walking around, seeing some of them there. Thank you again for hosting this event. It’s so critical to bring different perspectives onto campus, and to connect with the larger campus.” – Cal Poly professor 

Tuesday February 26th students will be hosting a smaller follow up meeting (which we call “Delve”), hearing some additional perspective from Religious Studies Professor Dr. Lloyd-Moffett. 

Many thanks to everyone who worked to make this event possible. Please let us know if you have suggestions for topics or speakers for future Forums. 

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Here’s a link to the upcoming Winds of Change conference for faculty and future faculty Saturday March 2, 2019 in Seal Beach, California.

This is an outstanding conference and opportunity to connect with Christian faculty from campuses throughout Southern California and beyond. This year’s guest speaker is Dr. Karen Jolly, Professor of History, University of Hawai’i at Manoa.

The Veritas Forum is an annual event sponsored by students featuring Christian and secular perspectives on academic topics like science, ethics, theology, sociology, and philosophy.

Several years ago, two Cal Poly students who were chemistry lab partners realized they were the student leaders of the Veritas Forum and the student Atheist club. As they talked about more more intentionally about working together on future Veritas Forums, they joked, “we should do a Forum called ‘Could Jesus and Darwin be lab partners?’”

This year, for the the first time, students from AHA, the Cal Poly Alliance of Happy Atheists, and the Veritas Forum were out on campus working together to promote and invite students and faulty to the upcoming 1/30/19 Forum. 

Students built a 8′ tall box, a graffiti board, with four questions they invited other students to stop by Dexter Lawn and comment on: 

• is religion a net good for society?
• what makes a society good?
• where to moral come from? 
• is a “pretty good” society good enough? 

Afterwards, students – both Christians and atheists – invited other students and faculty consider attending the upcoming Forum. 

In one instance, a student approached a professor walking by the graffiti board and asked him to comment on the question: “where do morals come from?” The professor stopped and said, “From the Ten Commandments, of course.”

The student was a bit surprised, and grimaced a bit. In this case, the student was an atheist; the professor was a Christian. Both of them are planning on attending.

We hope you will be able to attend, and will consider you’ll take this opportunity to invite your students, or colleague, as well. While space limitations don’t allow us to open up this event to the larger community, feel free to invite a friend to join you as your guest. 

Here’s a link to the Facebook Event. 

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This past weekend, a group of nine Cal Poly faculty were part of A Common Call – a one day conference for Christian faculty members in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

What made this year’s conference unique was it’s connection with the larger Cru Winter Conference. Students and faculty were to hear from our keynote speaker, Dr. Heather Holleman (English, Penn State). 

Our good friend, Dr. Susan Siaw (Psychology, Cal Poly Pomona) served as our emcee. 

Faculty and others from ten different universities enjoyed a chance to hear from Dr. Holleman and others, and interact on what it means to be a Christian faculty member on a public university campus. 

The conference was a chance for Cal Poly professors to interact with other faculty from other campuses. 

“The A Common Call conference was outstanding. It’s so rare to have opportunities to connect with other faculty, hear what God is doing in our lives, and to pray for each other. My only desire was the conference was longer.” comment from a Cal Poly CSM professor

Our hope is to host a similar conference next year. We hope you’ll consider joining us. 

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