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Legal Scholarship for the Kingdom

The primary claims of the first edition of George Marsden’s book, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship, remain as salient and persuasive as they were thirty years ago: First, Christian academics may—I will argue should—be doing their scholarship from a Christian point of view (more shortly on what that might mean in practice), and second,…
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Building the Future of Christian Scholarship

The first edition of George Marsden’s book The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship appeared the same year I completed my doctorate. I eagerly read it and it immediately became a touchstone book for my early career. And so, it was with great enthusiasm that I began reading the second edition. How have the ideas aged?…
May 29, 2025
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Addressing Reductionistic “Nothing but” Scholarship: The Conversation around a New Definition of “Evangelical,” Part 2

I remember teaching a weekend course on American Christian history in the late 1990s. Since it was a weekend course for working adults, I used several videos in those late Saturday afternoon hours when eyes glazed and heads nodded. I found some great videos about the history of American Catholicism and African American Christianity, but…
May 28, 2025
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Addressing Reductionistic “Nothing but” Scholarship: The Conversation around a New Definition of “Evangelical,” Part 1

Christian scholars interested in Christ-animated learning have long observed that one major danger to such scholarship is reductionism. George Marsden helpfully summarized the problem in his book, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship, “Once we have a convincing explanation at the level of empirically researched connections we are inclined to think we have a complete…
May 27, 2025

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How Professional Ethics Secularizes Moral Thinking

Any professor using a popular professional ethics textbook in their class is likely secularizing the moral thinking of their students. To help you understand why that is the case, I want to outline briefly the history and reemergence of professional ethics and then sketch the nature of most common professional ethics texts. A Brief History…
October 1, 2021
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Science as a Discipline of Contemplation?

Editor’s Note: The following blog post is provided by Professor Tom McLeish from his 2021 Boyle Lectures.  The full version of his lecture was recently published in Zygon together with a response by the former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, an article by Fraser Watts summarizing the panel discussion, and a second article by Professor McLeish…
September 29, 2021
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Reconsidering Power

It’s almost three o’clock on a Wednesday afternoon. I’m trying to finish up a bit of writing while constantly keeping an eye on the top right-hand corner of my computer screen. Three o’clock is right when my daughter’s school day ends. Readers of Power Women might very well recognize these words. They are taken almost…
September 28, 2021
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“Power Women” and the Professoriate

Growing up in a small New England town, I had a friend whose mother, a professor who taught at a private, religious college in the Berkshires, abruptly began dying her hair ash-brown when she was applying for tenure. I was bewildered and asked my friend, why? I thought gray hair was a sign of wisdom—a…
September 27, 2021
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Guest Post: Relating a Gospel

Some years ago I had the privilege of presenting a brief devotional session in a Catholic institute where I was undertaking some language study. The chosen theme was the Parousia: the resurrected King coming in power. The descriptions that were used came primarily from Revelation and contrasted rather markedly with the iconography surrounding us in…
September 24, 2021
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Guest Post: In Defense of Humanistic Learning

It is cliche at this point to observe that humanistic learning is declining in American colleges and universities, including Christian ones. There are new data points each year, but the conclusion is always the same: faculty positions supporting particular arts and sciences majors, such as classics, history, philosophy, etc., are being reduced.  It is easy…
September 22, 2021
BlogReviews

The God Who Plays: A Playful Approach to Theology and Spirituality

Play is pervasive. It is a quintessential creaturely activity that is observed and experienced in virtually all human cultures. Play pokes through and manifests itself in so many different forms of life that, if Christians fail to think about play, it means eliminating or subtracting a significant swath of human behavior from theological reflection. Brian…
September 21, 2021
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Dorothy Sayers: Reluctant Public Intellectual

Editor's note: Due to an internal error, this post was not distributed this past Thursday when it originally posted. As a result, we are distributing it today. Thanks, PLG The idea of the public intellectual, popularly introduced in the mid-twentieth century, has flourished over the past decade. A public intellectual is an expert, “often a…
September 20, 2021