Students packed Elkins Auditorium to near capacity Tuesday to attend Pepperdine’s second annual Veritas Forum. Attendees were encouraged on their Christian beliefs in a changing world from a speaker who struggled with faith throughout her life.
Dr. Mary Poplin a professor of education at Claremont Graduate University said she came to Pepperdine because she has great respect for the campus and great respect for what the university strides for and accomplishes. Poplin said she also simply loves to speak to students.
The Veritas Forum was founded at Harvard University nearly 17 years ago by Kelly Monroe Kullberg as an outlet for students faculty and people in the community where they could share their testimony and how they found their personal truth through the messages and actions of Jesus Christ.
Poplin opened her presentation with the story of her troubled past as she lost her Christian faith in college in a pursuit of intellectualism. She talked about her experimentation with drugs alcohol and as she put it “men while also being spiritually involved in transcendental meditation and Wicca.
In 1992 Poplin had a dream one that she would never forget that brought her into the Christian ministry and in 1996 she volunteered with the Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta India working with Mother Theresa. Poplin encouraged the attendees of the forum to hold on tightly to their Christian faith and to live out a Christ-like life of service.
“What I hope that people took away is the idea that in Christianity there are many intellectual principles in all the fields as there are in anything else and that they should resist secularism Poplin said. There is a living God who wants a relationship with them.”
Junior Jack Murphy student planner of the Veritas Forum said Poplin gave an inspiring message to the forum’s attendees. “I think students received a different type of message Murphy said. Something that may have been a new simplistic way at looking at your heart and looking at forgiveness and how we can use those things to serve.”
Senior Daniel Dugger attended the forum and through Poplin’s presentation found inspiration to continue working on getting his program Social Action and Justice in Haiti off the ground and making it a reality.
“It’s been hard staying focused and getting students excited about going Dugger said. This was just really like a breath of fresh air like saying ‘OK this is about focusing on God’ and it’s God who is doing everything which is phenomenal.”
As the forum drew to a close Poplin made it clear the generation of the student audience will face tough times in the future as the secular environment deepens its roots in society but the Christian faith is able to perservere through those times.