'My teacher, what are these cries I hear?Who are all these people conquered by their pain?'And he to me: 'This state of miseryIs clutched by those sad souls whose works in lifeMerited neither praise nor infamy.' Dante Alighieri, Inferno. Trans. Anthony Esolen. (New York: Random House, 2002), Canto III, 32-36. The Divine Comedy is among the…

But then, how can a man be virtuous without God?  That’s the snag and I always come back to it.Mitya in Fyodor Dostoevsky, Brother’s KaramazovFyodor Dostoevsky, Brother’s Karamazov, trans. Andrew R. MacAndrew (New York: Bantam Books, 1970). Can you imagine a culture that does not teach the virtue of forgiveness?  Actually, I found one conducting my doctoral…

The 2016 election of Donald Trump with 80% of the white evangelical vote has generated intense consternation about the identity of “evangelicalism”: the character of its constituents, its fragmentation according to political leanings, whether the term remains usable as a theological descriptor, given its partisan connotations. A related discussion has arisen concerning the history of…

In early February 2022, American Reformer published a provocative article by Caleb Morell titled “Stop Finding Your Identity in Christ.” Morell first notes the prevalence of this “identity in Christ” phrase in Christian literature, explaining that this language “exploded in the 1980s, particularly as Christians began borrowing this emerging term from secular psychology.” In the…

Everything is compromised. Nothing is worthy. Strip it down, strip it down. Take off the sugar-coating, the veneer, the gilding, the velour, and what is left? Nothing. Emptiness. Posing, pretending, preening, delusion.  Those of us who love – truly love – sometimes feel like the prey of shadowy hunters. We are huddled together for safety…

This morning a little space opened up in my schedule, and I have been re-reading a long-familiar book. The physical volume is old and worn. In fact, it was re-issued with a fresh title almost three decades ago, and I am holding the original edition, though I bought it used. As my eye has traveled…

The greatest commandment God has given us is to love the Lord our God with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength. And the second is like it, to love our neighbor as ourselves. Christian education, therefore, should help students and teachers alike become people who love God and love their neighbors more through the…

Throughout this series, I have explored the logic of a Christian university offering a graduate program to prepare librarians for service in a Christian college or university setting. I began by arguing that librarianship is value-laden and thus subject to examination from a Christian perspective. In my second post, I reviewed programs in library and…

In the first post in this series, I stated my intent to explore the logic of a Christian university offering a graduate program that equips library professionals to serve in Christian academic institutions. In my second post, I offered assessments of library science programs offered by six Christian institutions. In the process of making those…

In my previous post, I offered the following line of reasoning: (1) The field of librarianship is inherently value-laden and thus subject to examination from a biblical worldview. (2) Few Christian institutions offer a graduate program in library science. (3) Libraries that serve Christian institutions offer the most natural venue for integrating faith and librarianship.…