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Theological Foundations for Creation Care: Replacing Apathy and Despair with Hope and Christian Virtues — A Review Essay (Part 1)

Andrew J. Spencer’s and Steven Bouma-­Prediger’s recent releases applying Christian theology to contemporary environmental problems share similar goals and face common constraints. As trade paperbacks, both books are intended to motivate an indifferent or skeptical Christian readership and theologically equip students to address hot-­button political topics. The authors self-­identify as Evangelical, utilize the language of…
December 11, 2024
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Shaping Witnesses: Baylor’s English Graduate Program

In the past year or so, six graduates of Baylor University’s English graduate program have published books about the arts of reading well and the value of forming Christian imaginations. Jessica Hooten Wilson (grad of 2009) published Reading for the Love of God: How to Read as a Spiritual Practice (Jessica has also published several…
December 10, 2024
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Sharing Our Screens

Recently I re-watched The Truman Show, the 1998 film about a man, played by Jim Carey, who discovers that his life has been broadcast to the world as a reality TV show. Though produced a quarter of a century ago, the movie’s critique of an “always-on,” surveillant media culture felt timely and spoke to my…
December 9, 2024
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Not Quite Exiles nor Never Much of an Eden: The Meaning of Vocation for the Professorate Thirty Years after the Publication of Mark Schwehn’s Exiles from Eden

The early 1990s saw a rash of books on religion and higher education, and Mark Schwehn’s 1993 Exiles From Eden: Religion and the Academic Vocation in America was a book unlike any of the rest. It begins with two memorable illustrations of the central problem Schwehn addresses. The first recalls a faculty get-­together at the…
December 5, 2024
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Be the Hope You Seek

A friend asked me not so long ago, “Where can we find hope in such uncertain times?” Many of us have been asking this reasonable and pressing question for much of the past five years. As Christians, we can easily recite a couple of the 140 Bible verses that, in various different stories and admonitions,…
December 4, 2024
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Christ-Animated Scholarship and Human Worth

Every once in a while, I come across an article or book that exemplifies the best of what Christ-animated scholarship can and should be. I recently came across one such article in the field of psychology that addressed the topic of human worth. The concepts of self-worth and self-esteem have a long history in the…
December 3, 2024

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Christian Graduate Education Curricula Is Missing Christianity

I am continually amazed at how provincial and specialized contemporary graduate education is. By provincial and specialized, I mean that there is usually little interdisciplinary conversation that takes place within the curricula. Unfortunately, Christianity graduate education, which has reasons to overcome disciplinary silos, fails to counter this culture. In fact, although Christian institutions are supposed…
August 4, 2023
BlogBook Review

Hearing Vocation Differently: Meaning, Purpose, and Identity in the Multi-Faith Academy

Clark Kerr, former president of the University of California, once quipped that universities have become “a series of individual faculty entrepreneurs held together by a common grievance over parking.”Clark Kerr, The Uses of the University, 5th ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 15. In this context, Kerr also introduces the term “multiversity.” While playful,…
August 3, 2023
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Spiritual Murder 

The world is full of recrimination nowadays. There’s the online marketplace of terror, for one thing: doxxing, death threats, so-called “cancelling,” and just plain old ad hominem bomb throwing. There is the bloodthirsty tribalism that casts one’s opponent as an existential (and almost inhuman) enemy. And there is always, in abundance, that quiet world of “bitching…
August 2, 2023
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Becoming a Teacher

The things of the world call to us, and we are drawn to them—each of us to different things, as each is drawn to different friends.Parker Palmer, The Courage to Teach, (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998), 105. — Parker Palmer I entered the world of academia several years ago as a complete novice. My love of…
July 31, 2023
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Introducing Christian Scholar’s Review Themed Issue: Vocation

I am grateful to the editors of Christian Scholar’s Review for their invitation to guest edit a special issue of the journal, focusing on vocation and higher education. Although vocation is an important theological concept, it has had a complicated historical sojourn; it therefore requires some unpacking. At various times and in various contexts, the…
July 27, 2023
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Interdisciplinary Research as a Sharing of Gifts, Part 1

For all their economic vulnerabilities, small Christian colleges, and universities might be the ideal environment for fostering interdisciplinary research. Given that the realities of size, scale, scope, and student load can serve to restrict the kind of projects faculty at these institutions can carry out, it makes sense to recognize our strength in this niche…
July 24, 2023