2002
The Voice: Spring 2002
Pearcey urges students to be worldview missionaries
Nancy Pearcey’s convocation address was drawn from writing and research she is currently
doing for her next book, which will focus on the importance of worldview.
She began by saying how wonderful it was to be among like-minded people—something
that doesn’t happen often for her in public speaking—and told Dordt students what
a wonderful gift and intellectual treasure they have here.
“The world needs what you have,” she said, saying that current events have
heightened that need.
“We’re suddenly faced with a belief system that is as powerful as any
twentieth century ‘ism,’” she said, then quoting C.S. Lewis who wrote that people
do the most evil when they are trying to do good, when they
are acting out what they believe is true.
“If we don’t understand how to analyze worldviews, we won’t grasp what is
going on in our world.” In her view evangelical Christianity is weakest in
this area: high technical proficiency but no Christian political philosophy or sense of
Christian perspective beyond being honest and moral. “Their hearts are in the right
place but their faith is completely privatized,” she says.
For some, worldview is academic, stuffy, cerebral, she said. But she disagrees passionately.
“It is intensely personal. It helps us answer the most important questions in
our lives—where do we come from, what are we living for, what do
we base life on, who are we?”
“Do you realize what a precious heritage this is? How rare this is?
How much the Christian world needs what you have?” she asked Dordt students
and faculty repeatedly.
Using the examples of a Berenstein Bears children’s book, Marxist philosophy, and the
political/social phenomenon of sexual liberation, she showed how the theme of creation, fall,
and redemption could be used as a tool to understand what drives our
society.
“It’s important to do worldview analysis so you don’t get taken in unsuspectingly,”
she said.
“God has given you a privilege and an opportunity to see how your
faith applies to all of life, but you’re not just here for your
benefit,” she concluded. “It is a gift you’ve been given to bring to
the rest of the Christian world, to teach and to strengthen the body.
May God give you grace to be worldview missionaries to prepare his people
to meet the challenges of the twenty-first century.”
