What Does a College Chaplain do These Days

One profession which must be at the cutting edge of change in religion has to be the college chaplain. We can all remember when there was one chaplain for each of the major denominations. As time passed there were fewer of them and Protestant denominations combined into one chaplain. As this chaplain explains, about half of students entering college today mark the box for "none", no religion. They do come to the chaplain, however, to ask interesting questions like, "What is a Chaplain?"

The link explains today's students likely did not grow up in families where the tenets of Christianity were not practiced or even discussed. To them, Christianity is a foreign religion, believed by people who live somewhere else. I gather from the link the Chaplain answers questions as best he can. 

He related that a student had recently dropped by to tell him of a conference she had attended in another state that discussed the relationship between psychedelics and religion. We know they have been hand in hand for a long time, peyote and such, but it is not a field most chaplains know much about or even want to discuss. This link author, however, wanted to know all about what the student had learned.

While the end of Christianity is not eminent, there are millions of young adults who grew up in the faith and know a lot about it, it is daunting to think where one would start in teaching Christianity in the U.S. to those who no next to nothing about it. It seems like it would be easier to start teaching it to people who have some other religion. I remember Pat Robertson chuckling on the 700 Club about being in a poor country with little literacy and bragging about telling people God is "Spirit X" that they already believed in. Robertson thought he was saving these people from an eternity in hell. 

I would think that if one is starting to teach someone in the U.S. about Christianity she would quickly be asked why one is to believe the Bible was written by God merely because the Bible itself says this. The con job meter would buzz I would think.

Million$ from church collection plates is spent every year funding missionaries in other countries and college chaplains spread the faith. Are they actually spreading the faith or just defending it in a lost cause?