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…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

This academic term, my students seem more exhausted than ever (Faculty are tired too. But perhaps that’s a post for another day). My informal assessment “tool” at the beginning of each class— “Hold up fingers to indicate your level of energy today” —has yielded unusually many 1s and 2s, and this is consistent with the…

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…