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Redeemed Bodies: Women Martyrs in Early Christianity

Several years ago, when teaching a humanities course, I discovered the now-popular martyrdom story of Perpetua and Felicitas. In several history and humanities classes since then, I have introduced my students to The Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicitas using the narrative as an opportunity to inquire about authority, power, and gender. Some students have surprised…
January 15, 2010
Reviews

Christian and Critical English Language Educators in Dialogue: Pedagogical and Ethical Dilemmas

In recent years there has been criticism of Christians working in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), particularly as a platform for Christian evangelism. While the critiques have been remarkably strong by non-Christians,See, for example, Alistair Pennycook and Sinfree Makoni, “The Modern Mission: The Language Effects ofChristianity,” Journal of Language, Identity, and Education…
January 15, 2010
Article

International Development: Christian Reflections on Today’s Competing Theories

This article was written prior to the financial global downturn of late 2008 and early 2009. Why do poverty, inequality, stagnation, oppression, conflict and environmental calamity plague some nations while other nations do so much better? Economist Roland Hoksbergen, geographer Janel Curry and political scientist Tracy Kuperus review and assess some of the main contemporary…
October 15, 2009
Article

Sacramentalism in the Poetry of Philip Larkin

Although undoubtedly there is a strong current of skepticism running through the poetry of Philip Larkin, Don W. King argues that Larkin’s use of sacramental motifs suggests a pattern illustrating an ever-present—though often muted—fascination with transcendent meaning. That is, despite Larkin’s agnosticism, his frequent focus on sacramental motifs belies the idea that he dismisses completely…
October 15, 2009
Article

Faith Integration and the Irreducible Metaphors of Disciplinary Discourse

Discussions of faith integration often lament the fragmentation of academic disciplines and express the desire for a theologically centered, unified synthesis of academic knowledge. Steven Jensen argues that every academic discourse is defined not only by a complex formative history and set of rules and practices, but also by a root metaphor that serves as…
October 15, 2009
Article

Learning in a Time of (Cultural) War: Indoctrination in Focus on the Family’s The Truth Project

Randal Rauser argues that Focus on the Family’s popular lay-worldview curriculum entitled The Truth Project™fails to provide a true Christian worldview education, and instead evinces the marks of indoctrination. He begins with the core problem that that the curriculum encourages simplistic binary categories which distort the issues and inhibit the student from developing skills of…
October 15, 2009
Reviews

Knowing Christ Today: Why We Can Trust Spiritual Knowledge

As careers go, Dallas Willard’s is rather remarkable, in the sense of being both excellent and interesting. In addition to being a highly regarded technical philosopher at the University of Southern California, Willard has developed a brilliant “second career” in speaking and writing to the broader world of generally educated Christians about critical matters of…
October 15, 2009
Reviews

Small Screen, Big Picture: Television and Lived Religion

That a volume such as Small Screen, Big Picture: Television and Lived Religion has bee npublished attests to the fact that fictional television has evolved into a venue through which the public receives a great deal of its information about life and society. In the introduction, editor Diane Winston writes, “television today is essential to…
October 15, 2009
Reviews

The Logic of the Heart: Augustine, Pascal, and the Reationality of Faith

Logic of the Heart is an attempt to demonstrate the rationality of faith (specifically, the Christian faith) by supporting a deeply Augustinian and Pascalian conception of reason. According to Peters, faith is rational insofar as it accounts accurately for the totality of the human condition. Properly functioning rationality, according to Peters, ought be described thusly:…
October 15, 2009
Reviews

Transforming Worldviews: An Anthropological Understanding of How People Change

Paul Hiebert presents a definitive, one could say “exhaustive,” study on worldview: its concepts, characteristics, contexts, and some methods for analyzing them. He divides worldviews into small-scale oral societies, peasant societies, modern and post-modern ones and concludes with suggestions on transforming worldviews to fit the biblical pattern. The book is excruciatingly detailed, with 52 figures…
October 15, 2009