faith

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Commencement to remember: Country singer Eric Church on faith, family and more

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Commencement to remember: Country singer Eric Church on faith, family and more

When addressing the 2026 graduates at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, country-music star Eric Church used words rarely heard in secular-campus rites, such as "faith," "family," "grace" and "soul."

Using an acoustic guitar, Church explained how its strings, when in tune, represent essential elements of life. The May 9 speech went viral on YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and other platforms, with an estimated 4 million views so far.

The bass string is "faith," he said. "Your belief about what this life is for … what holds the universe together when science reaches the edge of its own explanation, and shrugs.

"The people who tend to their faith in ordinary seasons do not come undone in extraordinary ones. They still hurt. They still sit in hospital waiting rooms asking unanswerable questions at three in the morning. But they have a foundation to return to. … Tend to your faith. Not just when you're broken, but when you're whole."

Church, who grew up Baptist, didn't label his own faith in this speech. His eight-album career began with "Sinner Like Me" in 2006, with a title song that ended with this verse: "On the day I die / I know where I'm gonna go / Me and Jesus got that part worked out / I'll wait at the gates 'til his face I see / And stand in a long line of sinners like me."

The singer's address was not explicitly Christian and included zero material about politics. However, it was an example of a major campus welcoming an unconventional voice popular with middle America.

Elite-campus leaders need to show that they are committed to cultural diversity, noted Robert P. George, an outspoken Catholic and distinguished professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University. A 2022 survey of commencement rites at America's top 25 research universities and top 25 liberal-arts colleges failed to find a "single conservative among a sea of liberal and progressive speakers. A harmless coincidence? No," he wrote, in a recent Washington Post essay.

This "commencement conformity" may be caused by "inattentiveness or a lack of careful thinking on the part of administrators. George argued that these choices matter since, to quote Harvard University President Alan Garber, "truth is rarely found in echo chambers." Thus, it's important to challenge "ideological bubbles," even if that will cause on-campus tensions.

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No, seriously: Jeff Foxworthy is convinced that God has a sense of humor

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No, seriously: Jeff Foxworthy is convinced that God has a sense of humor

As a rule, Jeff Foxworthy never refuses autograph requests, but the redneck comedy legend hit a wall during a funeral-home visitation for someone in his extended family.

"When you go to a funeral home, a lot of times there's more than one visitation going on," said Foxworthy, reached by telephone. "Across the hall, there was another one … and it was a rowdy bunch. In the break area they had coolers with cans of regular Budweiser. …

"At some point in the evening, somebody over there recognized me and they started coming into our side and wanting to get a picture made. You know, 'Can I get my picture with you?' … And one turned into three and that turned into seven or eight."

Then a woman arrived with a felt-tip marker and made a familiar request: "Can I ask you a favor?' … Can you sign my brother's tie?'"

Seeking an escape door back to his family, Foxworthy said: "'Where's your brother?' And she said, 'He's in here, in the casket.' And that's the only time I have ever denied somebody an autograph. … But asking me to climb up on the casket and autograph the guy's tie?"

The truth in this sobering parable is that humor often surfaces during life's big transitions, even when they involve sacred beliefs and traditions. That's one reason Foxworthy has never written "You Might Be A Redneck Churchgoer If" jokes.

Yes, audiences would yowl with laughter, especially in zip codes defined by faith, family, food and fishing. But for some people, religion jokes would cut too close to the bone, said Foxworthy.

After four decades in comedy, he said that he reminds himself, that "everybody I'm going to look at tonight is going through some kind of a struggle. It might be financial, it might be physical, it may be emotional. … I'm like, 'Just be kind to people.' You know? Have grace. You don't know their story. And I don't think humor makes people's struggles go away. But I do think … if you're able to laugh and set that burden down for a little bit, it almost, like, recharges you to where you can pick it back up and go deal with it."

Helping the young stick to faith

At first, there didn't seem to be much an 80-something grandmother could do to help her church's college freshmen wrestle with the trials and temptations of their first weeks away at college. After all, she knew very little about Facebook, YouTube, online homework, smartphones or texting, let alone "sexting."

She did, however, know how to write letters. So that is what she did, writing personal letters to each student to let them know that she was praying for them, wishing them the best as they searched for a college church and looking forward to seeing them at Thanksgiving and Christmas.

According to church members, the "students sought her out and rushed to give her hugs and to say, 'Thank you,' whenever they came home," said Kara E. Powell, who teaches at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., and directs the Fuller Youth Institute.

However, another church member later stressed that the researcher had not heard the whole story. "Instead of writing one letter and that was that, she had actually written a letter to each of the students every week," said Powell.

This was one of the most striking stories that the seminary professor heard while doing follow-up work for the Youth Institute's six-year College Transition Project, which followed 500 Christian young people as they jumped from high school to college.

The goal was to find strategies for parents and religious leaders who wanted to help teens develop a personal faith that would "stick" when tested. The research was released earlier this year in a book entitled "Sticky Faith: Everyday ideas to build lasting faith in your kids," written by Powell and another Fuller colleague, Chap Clark.

The letter-writing grandmother, said Powell, was an example of one major lesson discovered during this process. After years of "segregating" teens off into their own niche, age-specific worship services and programs, there is evidence that young believers also profit from intergenerational contacts, conversations and mentoring projects with senior adults. Young people are also more likely to retain their faith if they helped teach the faith to the very young.

Right up front, the researchers admitted that the young people in this study had higher than average grade-point averages, were more likely to have been raised in unbroken homes and had grown up in churches large enough to employ youth ministers. That was the point.

Nevertheless, some of the results were sobering.

* When studies are combined, it appears that 40 to 50 percent of "churched" young people will abandon their faith -- at least during the college years.

* Only one in seven young people in the Fuller study felt they were ready for the personal, moral challenges of college.

* Events in the first two weeks establish patterns for many college careers, especially those linked to alcohol, sex and involvement in religious activities.

The finding that will inspire, or trouble, many parents, according to Powell and Clark, is that the faith practiced by most young people is rooted in the beliefs, values and choices that they see practiced in their own homes. If young people see their parents praying, it's more likely that they will pray. If they hear their parents weaving faith into the joys and trials of daily life, it's more likely that this behavior will "stick."

It's one thing to talk to children, said Powell. It's something else to find ways to truly communicate -- two-way communication -- with the young about faith, doubt, temptation and forgiveness. Breakthroughs can take place while discussing everything from homework to movies, from a parent's confessions about mistakes in the past to a child's hints about his or her hopes for the future.

"We are not saying that it will help if you lecture to your children about faith," she said. Instead, the goal is for "every parent to be a student of what their children love and, whether its sports or movies or who knows what, to be able to engage their children on that topic. You have to ask, 'What is my child passionate about?' You also have to be honest and let your children know what you're passionate about.

"Then you have to ask how you can bring faith into those conversations so that you can share your faith journeys. There is no way to force this. If it isn't happening naturally, the kids are going to know it."