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Four Cultural Movements in the Search for Meaning, Justice, Happiness, and Well-­being: Flourishing 1.0–Staying Human in the Absence of Meaning

What does it mean to flourish? The Israelites in Babylon likely did not imagine that they would prosper in exile. Yet through the prophet Jeremiah, they were instructed to build houses, plant gardens, and seek the good of the city in which they lived, even knowing that the exile would outlast most of them. Flourishing,…
July 7, 2026
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Beholding the Birds of the Air: A Reflection

I am a teacher at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and have been a student of God’s creation all my life. My family and I attend Geneva Campus Church, where several years ago, Rev. Bill Vander Hoven came for three months to fill a pastoral vacancy. I saw him often during my student coffee…
July 6, 2026
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God, Christian Virtue, and Government

“For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.” Romans 13:4 When taking Russian lessons in Moscow, my Russian language teacher and I…
June 26, 2026
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Book Review of Mere Christian Hermeneutics: Transforming What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically

In Mere Christian Hermeneutics, Kevin J. Vanhoozer offers what may be his most pastorally ambitious and ecclesially conscious work to date. While firmly rooted in the technical world of theological interpretation, the book’s animating concern is not merely how Christians read Scripture, but who Christians are becoming as readers, and how that reading shapes faithful action…
June 25, 2026
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The Spring 2026 CSR Book Reviews

The review section of this Spring 2026 issue of Christian Scholar’s Review dovetails quite nicely with the content of the special theme issue guest-­edited by Bryan Gill, though the two parts were planned independently. The bulk of the review section is devoted to three review essays. All three essays (especially the first two) examine themes…
June 24, 2026
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Introducing the Spring 2026 Issue of Christian Scholar’s Review: Finding the Imago Dei in Health Care

Sunday, on the last official day of spring, we released our spring issue online, coinciding with the expected arrival of the journal’s paper copies in the mailboxes of subscribers and faculty members at our institutional partners. We pride ourselves here at Christian Scholar’s Review, with our small volunteer editorial team and a single paid graduate…

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The Joys and Perils of Silence: Lessons from Counseling

In my Counseling Theory & Practice class for undergraduate psychology students, the first skills practice session focuses on the reflection of feelings. As such, many of the guidelines for this session spotlight what to say and how to say it. For example, I provide students with a list of “feeling” words to add to their…
May 7, 2025
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Are We Educating Intellectual Wrestlers? Not with Chat GPT  

Religious institutions of higher education often distinguish themselves from their secular counterparts in terms of something called “purpose.” Sometimes the idea is that the two kinds have different purposes; sometimes it’s that one is purposeful in a way that the other is not (as in the argument that “secular” means trying to be “neutral” between…
May 5, 2025
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Seeing, and Understanding

“They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, ‘Do you see anything?’ He looked up and…
April 30, 2025
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Rediscovering Meaning

Outside the friendly confines of the CSR blogosphere, society is fragmenting (or perhaps you could say it is fragmented). Truth itself seems increasingly privatized and tribal, adrift in a sea of relativism, subjective interpretations, and bold-faced lies. Political debates have intensified into existential wars, revealing a culture that feels not merely divided, but antagonistic, hateful,…
April 29, 2025
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Bad Daddy

Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres - Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière - WGA11837 - Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière - Wikipedia The French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was a beautiful embalmer of royalty. His paintings of emperors and aristocrats are as ravishing as they are uncanny, with their rubbery limbs, elongated necks and bovine eyes. His portrait of Mademoiselle Caroline Riviere,…
April 28, 2025
BlogReviews

An Extended Review of Jesus and the Powers: Christian Political Witness in an Age of Totalitarian Terror and Dysfunctional Democracies

Harold Laswell famously defined politics as “who gets what, when, and how.” These decisions are surely as fraught now as they were when Aristotle wrote about politics in ancient Athens. Politics has always been about power: who has the power to determine who gets what, when, and how? When it comes to power, Christians live…
April 25, 2025
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Love for Truth: Pondering Dennis Hiebert’s Love-First Epistemology.

In the fundamentalist churches of my childhood, propositional truths were weapons of spiritual warfare, wielded to help your friends and harm your enemies. Propositional truths held the community together, and they held the world at bay. Disagreements about propositional truths split all three of the churches my family attended before I went off to college.…
April 24, 2025
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“When in the Boat Together” ft. the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities’ David A. Hoag I Saturdays at Seven – Special Episode

In this special episode of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with David A. Hoag, President of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU). Hoag opens by discussing the investments Christian colleges and universities make in fostering relationship between faith and learning and how the CCCU is prepared to increase efforts…
April 23, 2025