Claire Rivers races to the mailbox to receive a letter of acceptance to Harvard University while a heavenly battle rages. In this fast-paced, suspenseful novel, the ageless war for the hearts and minds of students on our college campuses is revealed. Conflict between unseen evil and angelic forces reflects their battle for victorious living amidst confused messages. When Claire and her roommate encounter attacks on their faith, a deeper mystery -- involving Harvard's Christian heritage, the pull of money, and a dark plan for societal corruption -- unfolds around them. Will they succumb to temptation and destruction? What has become of Harvard's founding motto: Veritas, Christo et Ecclesiae -- "Truth for Christ and the Church"? Can Claire -- with other praying students and their parents -- counteract the forces of humanism and relativism ... and what will it cost them to do so?
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Shaunti Feldhahn is the author of the bestselling Y2K: The Millennium Bug -- A Balanced Christian Response. She works with the We Care America coalition, a successor of the Joseph Project 2000 ministry. She earned her master's degree in public policy from Harvard University in 1994 and worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on Wall Street as a financial risk analyst. Shaunti makes her home in Atlanta, Georgia, with her husband and young daughter.
Product Details
Paperback: 464 pages
Publisher: Multnomah Books; First Edition edition (September 1, 2000)
SHAUNTI FELDHAHN is a wife and mom first, as well as a popular speaker and best-selling author. After receiving a graduate degree from Harvard, Shaunti started out on Wall Street, but now applies her analytical experience in a totally different way. Today, Shaunti is a social researcher investigating the most important things we all need to know about the most important people in our lives - the vital surprises about the inner thoughts, feelings, fears and needs that they deeply wish we understood. As a result, her research has uncovered the little changes that have big impacts in our lives, marriages, families and workplace relationships. Her eye-opening books, including For Women Only: What You Need to Know About the Inner Lives of Men, and For Men Only: A Straightforward Guide to the Inner Lives of Women, have sold more than two million copies in 22 languages. Close to her own personal challenges, Shaunti has also tackled how to have biblical life balance as a busy modern woman (The Life Ready Woman: Thriving In a Do-It-All World) and how teen and pre-teen girls (like her daughter) can look to God for affirmation, instead of to friends, guys, clothes, or food (Made to Crave for Young Women, co-authored with Lysa TerKeurst). Shaunti has also uncovered knowledge that has proven to be game-changing for talented, high-potential women in the workplace as well as for men who want to cultivate positive working relationships and champion female players for advancement (The Male Factor: The Unwritten Rules, Misperceptions and Secret Beliefs of Men in the Workplace).
Shaunti's keynote speeches, pastoral interviews, leadership consultations and team training sessions are based on more than ten years of research, including countless surveys and thousands of interviews and focus groups with men, women and teens across the globe. Shaunti and her findings have been featured in media as diverse as The Today Show and Focus on the Family, The New York Times and MomLife Today, Cosmo and Lifeway's Living With Teenagers magazine. Based out of Atlanta, she and her family are intensely grateful for the crazy but wonderful life God has given them.
If you want a window into the experience of Christians in America's secular colleges, read this book. The author, a graduate of Harvard's John F. Kennedy school of government, has obviously done her homework. As I read the tales of mockery, condescension and anger directed at Christians on campus, it brought me back to my own law school experiences. While the story is obviously fictional, it communicates a real truth -- there is a massive, ongoing spiritual battle for the soul of our nation's university students, and Christians are seriously outnumbered.
Although the book is full of accurate information regarding the challenges Christian college students face, this is not a dry academic tome. Philosophical arguments are woven within a story that is full of excitement, danger and a dash of romance. You will find yourself caring for the fate of even the side characters in this novel. The Christian characters are real, revealing self-doubt and persistent flaws. Individuals every Christian can identify with fight a battle only God can win.
Excellent book. Buy it (don't borrow, even Christian authors need to eat) and enjoy.
The plot is rather complicated, but here's the gist: Claire Rivers is a Christian student who begins attending Harvard. She is ill-prepared for the secular environment, and the hostile attacks against her Christian faith, and the "tolerant" society that rejects and criticizes her views violently. She manages to make friends with other Christians on campus, including Brad, a member of the Christian fellowship group at Harvard, and Professor Mansfield, the lovable teacher of history, and a fellow Christian. Although she is a freshman, she is drawn by God into difficult deeds: assisting Mansfield and his TA Ian in a special research project that may reveal results devastating to the secular, humanist faculty at Harvard. Trying to be the accountability "officer" to her roommate Sherry, who first welcomes and requests the effort, then grows angry with, and rejects them. Things get shaky when some attempts are made to stop the research project. Claire came to Harvard to study, but finds herself chosen as one of God's front soldiers in . . . The Veritas Conflict.
In the world that Claire cannot see, angels chosen by God protect her against the enemy territory of the demon spirits.
The book is an excellent read. It took me a while to finish it, but it was worth it. The message of Christ shines clearly through the book without anyone having to preach at the reader; it merely takes place in the "everyday" life of the Harvard students. The debates that Claire and her friends find themselves engaged in are incredibly well-crafted, realistic, and enjoyable to read.
Are there any bad points?
... Well, just in case there are parents wanting to know, I'd rate this book PG, because there are some death scenes (one of `em will have you cryin' your eyes out) and a kidnapping, and vague descriptions of Satanic practices. There's also a few sexual references: one point where a man visits a porn magazine headquarters and views the girl while she is being photographed, and one point where a young girl caves to pressure and sleeps with her boyfriend. All this, of course, is painted in the BAD light as it should be, but it's all still rather suggestive to the imagination.
My advice is, take your time on this book. It's 446 pages long, and the print is nice and SMALL. It'll take you a little while to get through it, but it will be worth it in the end. And besides, who could resist a book by an author with such a cool name as Shaunti Feldhahn?
"Veritas, Christo et Ecclesiae" means "Truth for Christ and the Church". Believe it or not it was the original motto of none other than Harvard University.
In this novelization, we look behind the scenes and through the lens of two sides of a story involving the change of Harvard into a secular University, and the foundational views held today. The story is of Claire Rivers, a freshman at Harvard. Unknowingly she is to become involved in the middle of a battle for the spirituality of Harvard University. The other look we get is from the perspective of the spiritual battle waging behind the scenes between good and evil, angels and demons.
The book starts with the beginning of this battle which takes place some two hundred years ago, and sets the foundation for what is occurring today. The book tackles openly subjects like moral relativism, abortion, free speech, and secular humanism, and how prevalent and one sided today's University settings are. The book is decidedly from a Christian perspective, and at times the solutions are a bit too pat and the characters a bit too one dimensional. The most accurate portrayals are the every day arguments that take place in University classrooms today on the subjects of Philosophy, Sociology, History and so on.
The novel is fast paced, and written exceptionally well. The moving back and forth between the spiritual plane and the physical is done well, although Frank Perretti's book "This Present Darkness" set the standard on that. It is a great story and as such was hard to put down.
I recommend this book to anyone curious about the duality between the physical world and the spiritual plane, as these depictions challenge the imagination.... While many may find some of the plot lines too easily wrapped up, it is a good novel to enjoy and some thought provoking material and statements about spirituality, morality and philosophy.Read more ›
I loved this book. Sure, some of the dialogue and ideas are simplistic. But current christian fiction rarely has this books combination of history, charachters living out the love of Christ, facing the realities of the secular world, and recognizing spiritual warfare. The theology in the book is solid-not often a trait of christian fiction. Her other book The Lights of Tenth Street is great too. I can't wait till she writes more!
