The Athens assignment

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Wednesday, June 17th. Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Lessons from Mars Hill.

Each spring, thousands of students across the country participate in speech and debate tournaments.

BROWN: But one Christian league called Stoa asks students to engage with a different question: How do you talk about truth in a culture that no longer agrees on what truth is?

Here’s WORLD associate correspondent Amy Eytchison.

AMY EYTCHISON: 18-year-old Darcy Fukunaga gets into some challenging conversations.

FUKUNAGA: Recently I was talking with my piano teacher, who's an 80 year old white woman, but she told me that she's actually African American on the inside.

She says she understands the significance of such ideas. Fukunaga is learning to contend for truth through speech and debate. She competes in several categories, including one called Mars Hill. It’s a speech event that trains students to connect culture to Christianity.

AUDIO: So I’d like to gently remind you of our purpose here: You’re learning debate here, so you can stand for what matters out there…

Mars Hill is modeled on Paul’s Acts 17 sermon in Athens. It’s cultural criticism from a Christian worldview. Just as Paul used Greek cultural ideas to find common ground with the Athenians to share the gospel, the speech students delve into universal truths found in pop culture to form connections with people seeking spiritual truth.

Lynda Sloneker is executive director of Stoa:

SLONEKER: So many of our events teach our kids to speak well, teach them to present truth to the world, all of those things. But Mars Hill does uniquely empower the kids because it also teaches them to look for parallels in culture.

Students 14 and older research 72 topics in six categories. They evaluate pieces such as the graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman, the spoken word poem “Every 40 seconds” on suicide, songs by Billie Eilish and Twenty One Pilots, and the films Dune 2 and Wicked.

AUDIO:…headed to finals in Mars Hill: Christian Bach, Joshua Wang…

In each round, competitors get four minutes to prepare a six-minute speech on a topic chosen at random. Then the national qualifiers are winnowed to eight.

AUDIO: …Reese Hinton, Darcy Fukunaga, and Keene Fukunaga. Congratulations, Mars Hill finalists! [applause]

Finalists–like Fukanaga–say the event has changed the way they approach the world and engage with unbelievers.

FUKUNAGA: Just knowing that there's a story behind every single one of them gives me compassion, but also gives me more urgency to speak the truth, speak it boldly, but also speak it in love.

MUSIC: [“Strawberry Blond” by Mitski]

She says the song “Strawberry Blond” by Mitski helps her discuss the identity confusion so prevalent in our culture…

FUKUNAGA: With “Strawberry Blond” in particular, the theme I pulled out was when we lose this idea of absolute truth, then we don't know who we are as a result.

Fukunaga describes a delicate balance of building relationships, asking questions, and listening to controversial ideas—like those her piano teacher expressed—rather than merely stating her own beliefs. 

That’s the kind of wisdom she hopes she and her siblings are gaining as they prepare their speeches with their dad:

FUKUNAGA: He's very engaged with culture, so one of the things I love about Mars Hill is that it's very much a family bonding event.

For senior Lily Jacobs, competing has led to significant discussions—even at Starbucks. After visiting an art museum, she and her mom talked with the barista about an exhibit:

JACOBS: I asked him, you know, "what do you think the artist was trying to portray through that?" And we got into a really deep philosophical conversation that actually segued into Christianity.

Stoa’s Lynda Sloneker says that’s the point. The image of God impacts all art and literature, even if it’s created by agnostics or atheists.

SLONEKER: God’s fingerprints and those truths are in every created thing that humanity makes. And when we look at the arts and we look at popular culture, we see those fingerprints everywhere.

But finding culturally relevant pieces means wading into territory some Christian families find offensive. Sloneker says they do steer away from graphic violence and vulgarity where possible.

SLONEKER: It's walking the line, and I don't know that we always do it perfectly, but we always do it prayerfully.

Sloneker’s personal connection is twofold: not only did her children compete in the event, but she also spent part of her childhood in Athens. Several years ago, her family traveled to Greece, stood on Mars Hill, and one of her sons read Paul’s sermon aloud.

LYNDA SLONEKER: It was really just a powerful moment for our family, just to tie in our experiences with Stoa, with the truth of scripture, with the power of an event like Mars Hill.

AUDIO: In third place, Keene Fukunaga…in second place, Joshua Wang….which makes our Mars Hill champion, Darcy Fukunaga! [CHEERING]

Competitors and organizers say Mars Hill Impromptu isn’t merely a speech event. It’s something Christian families can do with any film, book, song, or piece of art—at home, over the dinner table.

For WORLD, I’m Amy Eytchison at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee.

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