Articles

We are in the middle of a run in the publication of “new histories.” In the five months after The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity was published, eight other books with “New History” in the subtitle were published in my library’s database, on topics from the evolution of mammals to Watergate. Hundreds…

I double-checked the title; was “witness” singular or plural? With the answer—singular—the book’s thesis became crystal clear. Amy-Jill Levine invites each reader to be a witness, a witness to arguably one of the most monumental events in history, the death of Jesus of Nazareth. She lays bare each ancient witness’s actions and testimony, and encourages…

There are, I believe, two major reasons—one external and one internal—why the number of humanities majors is sinking in colleges and universities across the country. The former has to do with economic forces outside the control of the departments of English, history, and philosophy, and even of academia itself. Job anxiety and rising costs have…

People today are ambivalent toward history. We can’t deny it; but we’re not quite sure how to approach it or what to do with it. Those in the “don’t know much about history” camp are both correct and generally content in making such a claim. Others regard history as little more than an academic subject—necessary,…

One of the first things I did as editor of this journal (CSR) was commission a review of church historian Mark Noll’s excellent and challenging book The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind which was first published in 1994 by Eerdmans and now, again, with new material in 2022. That review was by Gordon College professor…

Let’s start with my least favorite part of this book: its title. To be fair, it is my least favorite part because this book serves as an excellent example of robust Christian reflection on technology and the specific challenges of particular professional fields. While people in those professional fields will find the book most immediately…

I once heard a sarcastic remark after attending a poetry reading. Perhaps I made the remark. At any rate, the reading featured a past-middle-aged poet reading newish poems from the latest book—the tenth or so—this poet had written. The sarcastic comment: “I sip my coffee as I gaze on the birdfeeder out my window. I…

Perry Glanzer begins his ambitious and stimulating book with a story that is both uncannily prescient and deeply disturbing. He tells us that the impetus for his work dates from the 1990s when he spent an extended period of time in Russia and Ukraine studying post-communist moral education. Again and again in Russia, teachers confessed,…

There is now a well-developed Christian literature addressing the dualism of mind- body, and the consequences for our health and flourishing when this dualism is taken for granted, ignored, or unchallenged. Theologian Norman Wirzba suggests there is another dualism that similarly threatens our spiritual-physical-social health; this is the dualism between humanity and the rest of…