Skip to main content
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
Blog

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
Blog

“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
Blog

Pondering Truth and Love in Christian Life, Part III: Persons

The first post in this series pondered problematic modern Christian conceptions of truth, and the second pondered prescribed classic Christian practices of love, arguing for its priority. The focus in both was not on compelling truths about God, nor virtuous love of God or nature. Instead, the conundrum was what Christians believe to be true…
April 16, 2025
Blog

Pondering Truth and Love in Christian Life, Part II: Love

Yesterday’s post unpacked the problematic character of modern positivist Christian conceptualization and prioritization of truth. Though truth undoubtably matters enormously, it was proposed that absolute truth about metaphysical matters is not attainable, that assertions of propositional truth claims are prone to exercising power and producing interpersonal alienation, and that in profound experiential (not necessarily epistemological)…
April 15, 2025

Subscribe

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

Blog

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
Blog

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
Blog

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
Blog

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
Blog

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
Blog

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
Blog

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
Blog

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
Blog

Guest Lectures – Wernher von Braun at Wheaton College, 1961

A highlight for any college community, especially smaller colleges, includes guest lectures by important people of their times. These can include authors, artists, politicians, journalists, celebrities, and scientists. The best lectures are provocative, inspiring, and certainly memorable. Here is the story of one such event. As the newly-appointed director of the Marshall Space Flight Center…
February 17, 2022