As a pastor who is also a professor of social science, I am often asked by parents of teenagers who were raised in a religious environment how their son or daughter can maintain their faith when they go off to some large state university or private liberal-arts college. Many parents seem to believe that as soon as their child walks into a freshman class, they will throw out their Bibles and pick up Nietzsche.
They haven’t plucked this idea out of thin air. It was the premise of the 2014 film “God’s Not Dead,” which became very popular in Christian circles and spawned two sequels. In the movie, an evangelical student enrolls in a philosophy class led by an atheist professor. To pass the course, every student has to sign a declaration that “God is dead.” The main character refuses, leading to a series of debates in the class about the existence of God. In the end, most of the class sides with the student, and the professor leaves in defeat.