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The Liberating Arts: Why We Need Liberal Arts Education

Geoffrey Galt Harpham has argued that conversation about crisis is fundamental to the humanities in the United States, an insight I extend to the liberal arts more generally.Geoffrey Galt Harpham, The Humanities and the Dream of America (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011). Certainly, crisis-talk has spanned my own career. From internal academic anxiety…
March 15, 2024
Article

The Christian Use of Political Power

We are pleased to publish the text of the 24th Paul B. Henry Lecture, delivered at Calvin University on April 4, 2023. The annual lecture is sponsored by the Paul B. Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics, located at Calvin University. The lecture and the institute are named in honor of Paul…
March 3, 2024
Article

Reflecting on the 1973 Chicago Declaration: Legacies and Challenges for Christian Higher Education Today

How can evangelical communities work together amidst differences to cast a vision for gospel witness? This article focuses on the origins, process, and legacies of the 1973 Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern, with reflections on its challenges to Christian higher education today. The process of crafting this document and its resulting institutional and sociocultural…
Article

The History of The Gordon Review: Faith Integration’s “First” Journal

This essay recounts the history of The Gordon Review, a journal produced from 1955 to 1970 as an independent effort of several Gordon College faculty. Among Christian scholars from a more evangelical tradition, this journal was the earliest systematic effort to publish interdisciplinary scholarship integrating the Christian faith. The Gordon Review exhibited a particular approach…
March 3, 2024
Article

Trustful Waiting and Enemy Loving Responses to Uncertainty and Vulnerability: Christian Psychology Soul Care in an Age of Conspiracy Rumors

We illuminate conspiracy rumormongering by viewing it through the lens of Christian psychology. We propose that at the core of the anxiety and anger characteristic of much conspiracist discourse is a fundamentally unbiblical existential understanding of God leading to unbelieving responses to uncertainty and vulnerability stemming from human finitude. One fallen response to uncertainty is…
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Near-Death Experiences and the Emerging Implications for Christian Theology

If the thousands of global reports of “near-death experiences” (NDEs) are to be believed, they support much in Christian theology, including consciousness surviving physical death and the existence of a supernatural realm, a supreme being of unfathomable love, an intercessor named Jesus, and an afterlife with both glorious and ghastly destinations. Conversely, many NDE reports…
March 3, 2024
Review Essays

Three Visions for America: Liberalism, Another Liberalism, and Anglo-American Conservatism

Debates rage over the best direction for American conservatism, particularly in the wake of Donald Trump’s disruptive presidency. The three books reviewed here provide distinct diagnoses and prescriptions for American politics. Only one book, Yoram Hazony’s Conservatism: A Rediscovery, is primarily intended as a blueprint for American conservatism. Francis Fukuyama’s Liberalism and Its Discontents assesses…
March 3, 2024
Review Essays

Embracing Finitude at Every Stage of Life

As I sat down to begin writing this review essay of these recently published books, the sun was rising on the first day of the forty-eighth year of my life. I did not plan to be writing a review essay on my birthday, but it seems fitting given the topics addressed in these books. Like…
March 3, 2024
Book Review

Christian Higher Education: An Empirical Guide

This is just the book for which I—and many others—have been waiting. It is an objective, comprehensive, and credible assessment of over 500 colleges and universities who claim some connection with the Christian tradition. In fact, no one has tried a credible assessment of such a massive number of schools. This book offers a wonderful…
March 3, 2024