J. Gresham Machen Bibliography

What Is the League of Evangelical Students?

By Professor J. Gresham Machen, D.D., Westminster Theological Seminary, Philadelphia, Pa.

THE League of Evangelical Students is a contribution to Christian testimony. But Christian testimony is sometimes comparatively easy and sometimes hard. It is comparatively easy when one is living in a Christian environment, but it is hard when it subjects a man to loneliness, ridicule and abuse. If that be so, then the League of Evangelical Students has chosen for its witness-bearing just the hardest place of all; for its field is the student world.

No one who observes the conditions of life in our day can help seeing that our colleges and universities have for the most part drifted away from the Christian faith. The great state universities and other secular institutions have certainly done so; but in many of the church colleges the conditions, from the Christian point of view, are even worse. In the state universities, while the whole atmosphere is hostile to Christianity and there are incidental attacks upon the Bible in many classrooms, yet actual courses in the Bible or in “religion” are optional. But in the church colleges these courses are often required, and they are made the means of a direct and systematic attack upon the Word of God.

This attitude of the institutions themselves is of course reflected in the student body. Student movements which formerly were Christian have drifted away from the faith, and are now too often agencies of unbelief. Individual Christian students now find themselves without Christian fellowship in the midst of a hostile environment.

A Message of Cheer

At such a time the League of Evangelical Students comes forward with a message of cheer. To lonely Christian students on many a college campus it says: “No, you are not, as you think you are, standing alone in the Christian faith. There are other students, who, like you, believe that the Bible is the Word of God and trust in the shed blood of the Lord Jesus Christ as their only hope. You are united with them in the study of God’s Word, in prayer and in Christian testimony.”

The constitution of the League, in its prologue, cites as the reason for the founding of the League the fact that “mutually exclusive conceptions of the nature of the Christian religion exist in the world today.” That means that this movement is not based, as so many movements are, upon ignorance of real conditions. It means, on the contrary, that its founders—who, by the way, were themselves students—detected the great issue of the day and decided, with full knowledge of the issue, to take sides. When things are “mutually exclusive,” that means that if one is true the other is false. So it is with Modernism, on the one hand, and biblical Christianity on the other. They cannot both be true. A man must decide between them. The League of Evangelical Students has taken sides. It stands very clearly and definitely against Modernism, and it stands very clearly and definitely for the Word of God.

Importance of “No” and “Yes”

The prologue of the constitution further states that it is “the duty of those who share and cherish the evangelical faith to witness to it and to strive for its defense and propagation.” That means that the League has no sympathy with the feeble notion that a man can propagate Christianity without defending it, or that he can make his testimony positive without making it negative. According to the plain teaching of the Bible, one of the first things that a Christian has to learn to do is to say “No.” Unless a man can say “No” to error, he can never really say “Yes” to truth.

Moreover, that defense of Christianity which is so essential to its propagation includes clearly an intellectual defense. The League of Evangelical Students is a student organization; and it does not hold that a man has to cease to be a student in order to be a Christian. One of the purposes of the League, according to the constitution, is “to present to students evidences of the truths of evangelical Christianity.” The League believes that rejection of the claims of Christ is at bottom a thoroughly unreasonable, a thoroughly unscientific, thing; and that the Christian religion flourishes not in the darkness but in the light.

On that solid basis of the truth contained in God’s Word, the League of Evangelical Students seeks to promote a warm and joyous devotional life among its members, and to bring that warmth and that joy to the unsaved. There are two classes of member organizations in the League—in the first place, organizations consisting of the entire student body of truly Christian institutions, and, in the second place, chapters consisting of groups of Christian students in institutions where the general atmosphere is hostile to the Word of God.

The usefulness of the latter class of member organizations is surely quite plain. It seems obvious that where men and women are in an environment which in general is hostile to the Lord Jesus Christ they should come together for study of the Word of God, for mutual strengthening and for prayer. But how is it with truly Christian institutions? What need is there for the League of Evangelical Students in them?

Carrying the Gospel to Students

The question is often asked. “We have our devotional meetings already,” say the students of such institutions; “We have our Christian activities here on our campus; what need is there, then, for another organization like the League?”

The answer to such objections is very simple. It is not found necessarily in any proposal for a change in the Christian activities within the Christian institution itself. But when students in a Christian institution say to me, “We are Christians in this institution; what need have we of the League?” I say simply: “Yes, my brothers, you are Christians; but do you think that you ought to keep your Christianity to