How To Stay Christian In College, by J. Budziszewski

This book, even if it has a somewhat dated and pixelated cover photo, manages to be a useful and practical guide to young readers on how to remain strong in Christianity in college. There are, of course, some things the author gets wrong, including a tendency to confuse the Trinity, something he mentions quite a lot, with sound biblical doctrine, a false belief that leads him astray concerning the purpose of mankind as forming part of the family of God. That said, there is a lot in this book that is immensely useful and of practical benefit not only for college students, but for readers in general. Some of the difficulties discussed in this book, such as the direct confrontation with skeptics and postmodernists and the like, are likely to be more intense during one’s period in academia, but there are other struggles that the author discusses, like the need to stay connected with other brethren in fellowship and also to flee from temptation and avoid playing games with one’s heart or someone else’s heart through premarital sexuality, that are relevant to a wide audience, and are discussed bluntly and fairly. The book’s even-handed approach to political ideologies on both the right and the left is also refreshing.

In terms of its structure, the book is outlined in a very detailed fashion in the Table of Contents, and speaks on such issues as worldviews, campus myths, and how to cope with life in college, including the difficulty of dealing with hostile teachers who have the power of grading and are often of antibiblical worldviews. This is a difficult matter to deal with, and a student would be wise to develop a certain amount of firm graciousness in dealing with opponents, and also gain the skill of living as part of a counterculture, something that many Christians seem to find unusual. Given the author’s somewhat blithe comments about favoritism and biased grading when it comes to believers, it is a bit striking and somewhat disappointing that the author has no ideas about the construction of a genuinely Christian cultural and educational infrastructure, but that would cease to be a practical book, I suppose, and would be more of a policy brief, or an immodest proposal. There is no sense in criticizing a book for not doing what it does not set out to do, after all.

As far as what this book sets out to do, it is mostly successful. It adopts the format common to writing to teens and young adults of using staged conversations to present its point, whether between students and professors or between two friends. This sort of dialogue tends to strike one as a bit insincere, since one can always write great dialogue in one’s own head, but when one is speaking in real conversations, it never turns out quite as elegantly as one has written in one’s own mind. Besides that and some vague and ad hominem attacks at those the author deems as cultists, largely because their interpretations disagree with his own, especially if they emphasize the heart too much, given this author’s clear emphasis of the head, the book is a sound one that ought to appeal to those looking to study in college and be prepared for the sort of struggles one faces, and is also a good introduction to college life for parents who may not be aware of what their sons and daughters are facing in our contemporary society. All around, the book is worthwhile and practical, even with its occasional flaws.