Veritas Forum

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.

History

The first forum took place at Harvard University in 1992 and took its name from Harvard's motto, Veritas, meaning Truth [http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=232156] . 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.

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

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

Books and Media

Veritas' website has a media library [http://www.veritas.org/3.0_media/index.php] with free lectures on topics pertinent to the academic and personal lives of university students.

Veritas Forum Books [http://www.ivpress.com/veritas/] 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.

Links

The Veritas Forum website [http://www.veritas.org]

Local media coverage of forum events at:
Swarthmore College: Cambridge professor bridges world of science and faith [http://www.sccs.swarthmore.edu/org/daily/index.php?year=2007&month=02&day=06#n2]
Columbia University [http://media.www.columbiaspectator.com/media/storage/paper865/news/2006/11/21/News/Forum.Debates.God.Science-2505679.shtml]
Harvard University [http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=103773]
Hope College [http://www.hope.edu/pr/pressreleases/content/view/full/12576]
Stanford [http://daily.stanford.edu/article/2005/5/2/veritasForumPromptsReligiousDiscussion]
UCLA [http://www.dailybruin.ucla.edu/news/2003/apr/23/veritas-forum-connects-christi/]

An article by Chuck Colson on The Veritas Forum [http://www.breakpoint.org/listingarticle.asp?ID=2751]