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Doctors Crossing Borders, and Other Perils of Professional Training

This fall I am teaching an Honors Seminar designed for students in my home university’s College of Health Sciences. The students are all eager to pursue their professional careers as medical doctors, nurses, and physical therapists. Sadly, only 10% of them have expressed any interest in practicing in those parts of the world where they…
November 19, 2024
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When Judgment Hurts

Last month, I attended a conference at Calvin University focused on how to counter reductionism in teaching and education. Certainly, our culture has been in thrall to reductionist tendencies for some time, as the angry, dismissive tone of internet culture and political discourse shows us. Sadly, this tone often makes its way into the classroom,…
November 18, 2024
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“Is it Wrong to Mourn What You Do Not Know?” On Satisfaction and the End of Learning

Many faculty professional development days, hallway dialogues between colleagues, and programs for the integration of faith and learning exist because of the common question: how can we motivate our students to desire learning? Although scaffolded course objectives and early alert systems for struggling students are designed with the ostensible end of effective teaching in mind,…
November 15, 2024
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An Extended Review of The Artistic Sphere: The Arts in Neo-­Calvinist Perspective (Part 2)

The words of Calvinists like Kuyper on the one hand, and secular “formalists” like Greenberg on the other, can sometimes seem interchangeable. However, Kuyper and Greenberg would certainly have disagreed concerning the “area of competence” contained in the “Artistic Sphere.” For Kuyper (and for Rookmaaker, who worked out Kuyper’s ideas through art criticism) the artist…
November 14, 2024

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BlogBook Review

Neo-Calvinism: A Theological Introduction

What is neo-Calvinism? The authors describe it as holistic, organic, and modern in its orthodoxy (8). Still, these terms are pregnant with meaning and need explanation. Thankfully, Brock and Sutanto have provided an excellent text to help us understand neo-Calvinism within its own theological genesis. There is a particular salience to the book’s emphasis on…
June 13, 2024
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Introducing Christian Scholar’s Review’s Spring Themed Issue: Virtues in the Practice of Business

In October 2023, twenty-five theological ethicists, business ethicists, economists, and philosophers gathered in New Orleans to explore the importance of virtue in business ethics for Christians. The symposium was hosted by Loyola’s Center for Ethics and Economic Justice and funded by generous support from the Kern Foundation and Seattle Pacific University’s Center for Faithful Business.…
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Scapegoating: Baby Steps at the Dead Sea

Sometime in your life, you have been a scapegoat. At some point in your life, you have been at the bottom of a pecking order, or at least very near to it, and you have felt ashamed and afraid. It’s likely that this experience morally compromised you. Maybe you lied to protect yourself. Maybe you…
June 10, 2024
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How to Articulate and Incarnate Your Institution’s Christian Identity: Lessons from Australia

Developing a theologically-informed vision of excellence about any topic, such as Christian higher education, requires not only serious theological and empirical study but also two other important things: 1. Studying the topic’s history; 2. Making international comparisons. Regarding the latter, one of the wonderful things about doing international research in Christian higher education is that…
June 7, 2024
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It Takes a Village to Form a Christian Scholar

I can still recall my nervousness as I taught my first classes at a Christian college. I was well-educated in electrical engineering at a large secular university, which is to say I was not well-educated in anything else. I had spent many years being catechized to think like an engineer, but faith remained largely peripheral…
June 4, 2024
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Intolerance and the Riddle of Words

“I don’t understand why Christians have to be so intolerant of others.” I had just finished a moderated discussion on religious pluralism with an articulate professor from another university who argued that all religions and forms of spirituality are equally valid options in today’s diverse world. I agreed that different religions and spiritual practices could…
May 28, 2024