“Follow Christ, read the scriptures, allow God to speak to you and then go out and make it happen. Make this messed up world more like Heaven, and that’s the most exciting, fulfilling life possible,” said Cliffe Knechtle to an audience of about 400 listeners at Sage Chapel on Thursday evening, following an open Q&A on Ho Plaza on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons.
Drawing in Cornell students and the Ithaca community, Cliffe Knechtle and his son Stuart Knechtle, Christian activists and pastors with a significant online presence, held their Ask Cliffe 4-day event at Ho Plaza. The activists answered questions about Christianity in collaboration with the Christian Union Vita, Cru Cornell, Emmaus Road English Ministry, Christian Business Society at Cornell and Fellowship of Christian Athletes.
The Knechtles hosted an open question and answer session, which provided non-Christian students with the opportunity to ask questions about Christianity and Christian students to reaffirm their beliefs, deepen their understanding of the Gospel and learn more about the Christian religion.
“What are you free to do in your life?” Cliffe said. “If you’re free to do anything, you’re random. But if God creates you for a purpose and a mind to develop, then you better get ready to make a big difference in this world for truth, justice, compassion and generosity.”
The Knechtles garnered followers and attention prior to the event on campus through Give Me An Answer — a media platform created to answer questions on Christian beliefs — as well as through consistent Ask Cliffe Q&A series held on college campuses including Yale, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford and the University of California, Los Angeles.
Andrew Arthungal ’28, who attended the open Q&A on Ho Plaza, has followed the Knechtles’ Q&A series for years, naturally drawing him to the event on Wednesday afternoon.
“I definitely have a lot to learn from him and I wanted to learn how to share [the Christian faith] the way he does,” Arthungal said.
Students posed a variety of questions related to their faith and the current society with questions ranging from the ethical standards of Christianity in politics to the comparison of Christianity with American values of freedom and individualism. The Knechtles answered the questions, relating it back to faith, and engaged in debates with the audience if opposing views were expressed.
Some Cornellians raised objections to Cliffe’s beliefs. Julian Kanu ’26 engaged in a more confrontational dialogue with Cliffe in which he critiqued Cliffe’s reasoning, arguing that his definition of subjectivity would lead to an absurd conclusion.
In a statement to The Sun, Kanu wrote, “As a philosophy and math student who has published serious work in philosophy journals, I am deeply offended.”
He also noted that in a video which was posted to Stuart’s Instagram, the interaction was cut strategically to exclude context and misconstrue his argument.
“The video is deeply edited. The video jumps in where you get no context as to what is going on,” Kanu wrote.
In the heat of their interaction, Cliffe stated “Mocking is not a good argument. Or, do they teach that mocking is a good argument?”
In his statement to The Sun, Kanu contended “We should mock people like Cliffe. He makes the huge claim that “objective morality requires God,” which almost no analytic philosopher takes seriously.”
While there were some moments of contention between the students and the speakers, including a few heated arguments, the atmosphere was deemed to be overall “relaxed” by viewers.
“I think a lot of debates can get really heated and nasty, and even among Christians, I had debates where people will say disrespectful, mean and rude things,” said Summer Woo ’28, a member of Cru Cornell.
She further emphasized her surprise at the calm atmosphere of the Q&A event on Wednesday.
“I think it’s amazing how many people are out here and want to learn. [Cliffe and Stuart] mentioned stories about other campuses, where some Ivy League people got snappy with him, and I think it’s really nice how this community on campus is very relaxed.”
When asked about differentiating between people who use Christ to build faith and those who use Christ to earn money, Cliffe criticized those who purposefully use the religion for money, urging the student to point them out and follow Jesus’s word on going against hypocrisy.
The Knechtle’s Ask Cliffe event not only answered questions posed by the Cornell community and the Ithaca community, but also strengthened the faith of many as well.
Sophia Dunikova, a senior in high school, was in attendance at the Q&A event on Wednesday. Dunikova explained how the answers the Knechtles gave clarified how she thinks of her faith.
“It was an opportunity to learn and see different perspectives about faith that I didn’t see before,” Dunikova said. “It also gives an example of how, when we do disagree with our siblings in Christ, we should act in those cases instead of taking it on a personal level, but seeing it as a ‘I love this person and I should talk to them like that and not based off of fleshly responses.’”
Chloe Cho ’26, a member of Emmaus Road, also expressed how the event would impact her faith in the future.
“For non-believers, it’s hard for us as Christians to approach and answer them thoroughly and sometimes I get really scared to answer their questions because I think I’m not capable, I’m not knowledgeable enough to really explain everything,” Cho said. “But I think this was a great opportunity for Christians to get the courage to rebuild their faith and also to spread the words to the Cornell campus.”
Through Cliffe and Stuart’s open Q&A events, Christian students expressed that it reaffirm their faith in Christ, strengthening the sense of community on the Cornell campus.
“I think one of the things Cliffe and Stuart do is they spark a lot of courage in the Christians who are here to speak out. They bring that spark of courage and give us a launching pad,” Arthungal said. “In the community as a whole, he sparks a lot of interest to get these really good questions answered. He takes people's questions and also gets people asking questions, which is exactly what we want.”
