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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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Soviet Tanks and the Good News: for Reflection on Mark 16:15

We were aboard the Fyodor Dostoevsky, in port on the Moscow River, just after returning from an early morning visit to Red Square, where we had been puzzled by why it was completely devoid of visitors. Our guide, Natasha, had queried a lone soldier who said it had been cleared for a movie production. As…
March 3, 2022
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Guest Post – Lament as a Christian Pedagogical Tool

Editor’s Note: In light of Ash Wednesday and this time of repentance, confession, and lament before Easter, we will be hosting once a week posts on the theme of lament. Around the time of the Great Recession, wildfires were burning in the county where I lived in Southern California. In the early autumn, the Santa Ana…
March 2, 2022
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Faith in the Invisible and the Nature of Reality

When I was a teenager, I remember hearing the question “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? At the time, I thought, “What a stupid question—of course it makes a sound.” But the longer I teach science, and the more I learn about…
March 1, 2022
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The Christian Scholar’s Review Winter 2022 Issue

With today’s blog, I am pleased to introduce the Winter issue of Christian Scholar’s Review. As I write this, there’s not much winter left in the Pacific Northwest with the crocuses in bloom and hummingbirds fliting across my study’s window. But as has been the case with so much of our cattywampus pandemic lives, the…
February 28, 2022
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Teaching with Fire, Part 2: The Open Inner Core

In Part 1 of this essay, I argued that the structure of a flame is, at certain levels, similar to the structure of life. The flame suggests that human nature, and even divine nature, is self-gift with a purpose. The stress of burnout may be a sign that the gift is misaligned somehow. But once…
February 25, 2022
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Teaching with Fire, Part 1: Why It’s Easy to Burn Out

My friend left academia for industry last month. He posted online: “I spent years hearing how ‘flexible’ academic is but now disagree. How often did I tell my family things would ‘slow down’ after X? Academia was unstructured but not flexible. Structure (sick/vacation days!) with good management = flexibility.”Carpenter, Tom. Twitter post. January 25, 2022,…
February 24, 2022
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Guest Post – Embracing Limitations as Opportunity: A Communal Care Approach to the Adjunct Crisis

Like many others, last fall I read with interest, in Christian Scholar’s Review, scholars’ reflections on George Marsden’s The Soul of the American University Revisited and Marsden’s response. The experience was—in no particular order—encouraging, convicting, and depressing. At different points, I, likely along with others, saw reflections of both the successes and challenges of my…
February 23, 2022
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Keep Finding Your Identity in Christ: Responding to Sloppy Christian Reasoning about Identity

Christians should always reflect critically upon how we use theological language. Yet, we must recognize that sometimes our critical reflection can be corrupted by our cultural location. That is the problem with a recent web article, entitled, “Stop Finding Your Identity in Christ,” by Caleb Morell. The essay contains numerous fallacies and mistakes that provide…
February 22, 2022
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Thinking Beyond the Ivory Tower: An Interview with Melissa Cain Travis

Having worked in academia for the past two decades, I often take for granted the myriad opportunities it provides for substantive discussion and debate, ubiquitous reading suggestions casually tossed out in hallway conversations, and routinely scheduled lectures and workshops. Like most, I went into teaching as much for that milieu as for anything else this…
February 18, 2022