Skip to main content
Blog

Writing Short Stuff

Reading these daily postings has become a refreshing ritual for me. As someone who likes books and long essays, I have been a faithful reader of the Christian Scholars Review since its beginning in 1970. Yet, as the blog has developed, the format of short daily pieces has come to be something I cherish. Early…
October 30, 2026
Blog

The Problem with Siloed Religion Departments, a Lack of Incentives, and Christ-Animated Learning

Earlier this year, an article by the well-known Christian sociologist Christian Smith made the rounds. Entitled “Why I’m Done with Notre Dame,” Smith chronicled his frustration with the University of Notre Dame’s priorities and administrators' lack of effort in promoting its Catholic mission. I found his description of what happens at the University of Notre…
October 29, 2026
Blog

A Conversation, So-Called

FIRST: I’ll tell you what I’d like to see in my classroom: genuine Socratic dialogue. SECOND: You’ve been reading too much Classical Education hype. What makes you think that’s the answer? FIRST: Formally, it just works. You’ve got to admit that Plato is so much more engaging than most philosophers, mostly because he wrote dialogues!…
October 27, 2026
Blog

The Logic of Belief: The Design of the Universe

We do this thing at LeTourneau as we interview people for faculty positions – “Tell us about your faith journey.” Some call it giving your testimony. Many candidates branch off along two main paths: (1) I've always been Christian, since I was a small child - I can't remember anything else; or (2) they relate…
October 26, 2026
Blog

The Rational Structure of Creation: What Organic Chemistry Reveals About the Logos

The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being,sustaining all things by his powerful word. – Hebrews 1:3 Organic chemistry reveals a world of remarkable order. Whether one examines the molecular handedness of amino acids and sugars or the predictable mechanisms governing substitution, elimination, and addition reactions, the natural…

Subscribe

for new content notifications, access to video and audio conversations with our writers, and invitations to our events.

Blog

Learning about Jesus: Vital for Christ-Animated Education

Jenell Paris’ post this week introduces a new book for which she wrote the introduction Christian colleges and universities vary one from another, but share a central commitment to Christ, and to teaching students in a “Christ-animated” manner. As an anthropologist, I rely on interdisciplinary study to deepen my knowledge of Scripture so that I…
November 4, 2020
Blog

The Demise of Gentleness

Failing to recognize who we really are, image bearers of God (Gen. 1:26), causes us to lose our moral way. The Christian virtue of gentleness is a perfect test case. For hundreds of years, due to the Christian moral tradition, men and women alike were encouraged to be gentle (as reflected in the use of…
October 30, 2020
Blog

A Word in Season for the Weary

When I was 26 years old, the night before my water baptism, I prayed and asked the Lord to reveal to me my calling. He impressed this verse strongly on my spirit: “The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to…
October 28, 2020
Blog

Naughty Gnosticism and Film Scholarship

I ended my last post suggesting “the relevance of cinema to Christian orthodoxy.” What exactly does this mean? On one level the answer is easy: award-winning films have portrayed dedication to Christ with respect, such as The Mission (1986, Roland Joffé) and the recently streamed A Hidden Life (2019, Terrence Malick), about a martyred Austrian,…
October 26, 2020
Blog

The Passing of the Age of the Novel

For three centuries, the novel was the literary genre that expressed and shaped the modern condition more than any other literary form. A long prose narrative that focused on the ordinary life of an ordinary person, the early novel was the perfect form to express the newly emerging autonomous, ambitious individual. Of course, since the…
October 23, 2020
Blog

Carrying Community as Educators

Two comments about courses of study separated by more than 80 years have me thinking again about the relational fabric of my classes in the time of COVID. One of the comments arose from the learning experiences created by German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer at the seminary he led at Finkenwalde in the late 1930s. Bonhoeffer…
October 21, 2020
Blog

Blessing for Insult in Today’s Argument Culture, Seriously?

At a time when it seems we can’t agree on anything, 98% of Americans state that incivility is a serious problem; while 68% agree it’s reached crisis levels.  From cyberbullying, to hate speech, workplace harassment, demonizing political language, verbal abuse, and intolerance the vast majority of us (87%) no longer feel safe in public places…
October 19, 2020
Blog

Guest Post – Title IX: Why Should Christians Care?

Generally, prior to a decade ago, when people heard “Title IX,” they thought of women’s sports. Now, we’ve equated Title IX with sexual violence. However, the topic of Title IX should not be reduced to either of these aforementioned issues. As the law states, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of…
October 16, 2020
Blog

Stewardship as an Environmental and Economic Ethic

One of the most powerful metaphors in Christian social thought is the idea of stewardship. It comes right out of Genesis, with the idea that God gives humans a job to do on earth, and in doing that job, we are serving God. The idea is used widely in writing about the environment, economics, and…
Steven McMullen Headshot
October 14, 2020