For many students college is a time to question everything they have been taught, including ideas about religion. To Timothy Stevens, University chaplain at Northwestern, this sort of examination is good. Only through careful scrutiny, he believes, can students' religious views be successfully incorporated into their lives, to be further shaped by the experiences and reflection that follow the college years. When you have to explain your views, it helps confirm your beliefs or causes you to refine beliefs and even change them. Some students find it threatening to encounter the plurality of religious points of view present at Northwestern and other college campuses.
Discussion is healthy as long as there is mutual respect.
The worst message is the message that it doesn't matter what you believe, that all religions are going in the same direction and it doesn't matter. That's sloppy liberalism. It is much better to have a dialogue. Northwestern's chaplain since 1986, Stevens earned a doctoral degree in English from Northwestern and a master of divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary. He is married and the father of two children.