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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
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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
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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

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Guest Post – The Pilgrims’ “First Thanksgiving” Was Not the One We Remember

Today millions of Americans will celebrate Thanksgiving, and some, at least, will find a historical precedent for what they are doing in the Pilgrims’ celebration on the coast of Massachusetts in 1621. Although frequently embellished and sometimes caricatured, the story of the Pilgrims’ “First Thanksgiving” is rich with insight and inspiration. The Pilgrims were human,…
November 24, 2021
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Guest Post – Utility of a Higher Order

This article first appeared in Current. Love of God and neighbor are at stake in the battles over liberal learning  In his journal entries for September 8 and 9, 1960, the Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton explores the importance of “being able to rethink thoughts that were fundamental to people of other ages, or…
November 22, 2021
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Grading as Spiritual Discipline

Here’s an open secret: professors do not go into teaching for the grading. Cliché, I know, but for most of us, grading is the necessary cost of doing what we love: leading lively discussions, preparing thought-provoking lectures, writing ground-breaking books or articles, and mentoring students. Grading, on the other hand, is just, well, grating—at least…
November 18, 2021
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Judging King Kong by its Cover: The Aping of Beauty

When visitors enter the museum at Wheaton College’s Marion E. Wade Center, which archives work about and by C.S. Lewis and six of his British influencers, they are treated to an eye-popping display of 53 book covers from famous works: The Two Towers from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Lewis’s Perelandra, Sayers’s first Lord Peter…
November 17, 2021
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Guest Post – Do We Want to Support Women?

Editor’s Note:  Dr. Reynolds’ post is part of a once a week series we have been doing on the recent book, Power Women: Stories of Faith, Motherhood, and the Academy. You can find previous posts here, here, here, here, and here. The recent CSR series on the book Power Women, as well as the book itself,…
November 16, 2021
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Guest Post – Campus Eating

When our son moved into a dormitory as a Calvin College student in the 1980s I had already been on the faculty there for fifteen years. But suddenly I experienced the campus in new ways. I had known all along, of course, that there were dormitories, parties, various student services, and the like. But that…
November 15, 2021