Chase Gymnasium on a weekend is usually filled with students attending a rowdy basketball game or worshipping at Singspiration. However, this weekend Jewish and evangelical voices will be heard in a discussion sponsored by an off-campus company in partnership with Torrey Honors Institute and the apologetics department.

BREATHING LIFE INTO A STALE CONVERSATION

"An Evening with Ravi Zacharias and Dennis Prager" will bring the title speakers, who are evangelical and Jewish, respectively, together to present, “Does God Still Matter? Finding your moral footing in the quicksand of secularism,” according to the event website. Following the discussion, Craig Hazen, director of the graduate program in Christian Apologetics, will facilitate a Q&A.

“Those who take belief in the God of the Bible seriously feel burdened by our increasingly secular society. People are abandoning truth, Western culture is failing, and the lines between right and wrong are becoming irrevocably blurred,” Zacharias said in an email.

He and Prager will focus on what happens when culture replaces God’s authority with that of the state — a topic that needs a revamp, according to Hashtag Productions CEO RJ Moeller.

“We try to breathe new life into stale conversations about social issues and cultural issues … so we just kind of mash up the most interesting folks we can find,” Moeller said.

Interesting folks, indeed — Prager has been called “one of America’s five best speakers” and is a bestselling author and sought-after television show guest, and Zacharias is a speaker and consultant for a variety of world leaders and has spoken at the White House as well as National Prayer Breakfasts in the U.S., Canada, England and Africa.

They come from different faith traditions but talk — and argue — like old friends, said director of Torrey Honors Institute Paul Spears.

“You kind of feel like you’re sitting in on your living room and they’re having this fight … And they’d have this same fight whether they were in their own living room or in front of all these people, and it’s not even a fight, but it’s a conversation, and mostly what you find is they agree with each other,” Spears said.

AUDIENCES "EATING IT UP" 

The event is hosted by the university and sponsored by Hashtag Productions, a media company focused on pairing speakers from different faith traditions for live events at evangelical churches and universities, according to their website. Prager is the anchor for most of their events.

Hashtag Productions had the date and the speakers locked down and just needed a site to host the event in the greater Los Angeles area. That is when Biola stepped in, according to Brian Shook, administrative director for the office of the president.

“We were eager to host it because we think a conversation of this level of importance is only fitting to happen at a Christian university,” Shook said.

This is the second of five events Hashtag Productions is doing with Zacharias and Prager. At the last gathering with the pair, there were 2,500 attendees in person and 10,000 viewers online. That night, #raviprager was trending on Twitter.

“People are loving it, they’re eating it up,” Moeller said.

The event will take place in Chase Gymnasium on Feb. 22 and a live stream will be available online. Attendees are encouraged to pose questions to Prager and Zacharias using the hashtag #raviprager on Twitter.