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AI and a Possible Renaissance for Christian Higher Education

The early Greeks saw the essence of education as Paideia: the process of forming a whole person into an ideal citizen. They emphasized the formation of virtues like prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance in preparation for active citizenship. In Plato’s Republic, we read that “The object of education is to teach us to love what…
December 8, 2025
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First Steps at Advent: On Faith and the Fantastic Four Film

Amid star-strewn heavens, a woman groans in labor pains as an enormous devourer endangers her, intent on seizing her miraculous child the moment he’s born. So unfolds the vision of Revelation 12:1–5. So too goes a crucial scene in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s latest film, The Fantastic Four: First Steps (2025). The Revelator retells the…
December 5, 2025
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Institutional Survival, The Chocolate War, and The Weight of Glory

All of us who read the Christian Scholars Review want Christian higher education to survive.  Most of us, anyway, are aware of the growing threats to our survival, both as individual colleges and universities; and to our survival as a collective enterprise. Where is Eastern Nazarene University today, Barrington, or Nyack—to limit ourselves for the…
December 3, 2025
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Academic Gratitude

We learn to practice virtues in specific contexts. Thus, academics always need to think about how to apply Christian virtues in their particular learning environment in specific ways. In particular, as academics, we should have special reasons to be thankful during this season. Anyone who teaches has received intellectual gifts that God does not bestow…
November 24, 2025

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Returning to Campus, In Person

As many of us return to physical campuses this fall, mostly without masks, we are following the advice of classic sociologists: humans need proximity. It’s worth the trouble to regain this aspect of pre-pandemic life. As for me, I anticipate seeing students again with joy, but being on campus also brings the strong possibility of…
August 3, 2021
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Editor's Note: Due to an early morning link problem with the e-mail sent Thursday, we are resending Katie Kressar's post Friday, July 23rd as well.  In addition, the Christ Animating Learning Blog will take a one week vacation next week. We will return on August 2nd.  Thanks, PLG Like many academics, I’m a small-town kid…
July 22, 2021
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How Southern Honor Corrupted American Higher Education: A Christian Critical History and Alternative to Honor Codes

Universities, including Christian ones, have become quite comfortable with what some might describe as the “virtue” of honor. Although we may instinctively classify it as a favorable trait, honor—as it exists on college campuses today—has a troubled backstory. What is more, today’s faculty and administrators who esteem honor may not know about its contentious history.…
July 21, 2021
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Grieving the (Possible) Loss:

What I Love about South Korea Study Abroad, and Why It Might Not Be the Same Again My home state of Washington just declared a “full re-opening” and a return to a (new) normal. As a result, I can see relief on the faces of those around me as we Washingtonians attempt to remember what…
July 20, 2021
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Guest Post: A Well-Read Life

I have designed my ethics class to interweave ethical reflection (theory) with formation (practice), in part by thematically pairing readings with spiritual exercises. One such pairing includes Aquinas’s account of the virtue of love (Summa theologiae II-II q. 25-27) and a week of repeated contemplation of the apostle Paul’s hymn of love in I Corinthians…
July 19, 2021
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Teaching as a Call to Becoming

In teaching Biblical studies, I have come to view the integration of faith and learning less as a movement from doing to becoming and more as a process from being to becoming. It is less a movement from something to another, and more a maturation process, the transformation of one’s identity, brought about through the…
July 16, 2021
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On Humility, or, Christianity as Bull-dung

In a post engagingly entitled “Academic Freedom: From Ram-skit to Bull-dung,” Crystal Downing relates how a professor bragged about telling students, “Christianity is ‘bull-dung’ and that’s not opinion; it’s fact.” My immediate thought was that this was indeed an inspired metaphor for the faith whose God was born in a stable. Like the crown of thorns,…
July 15, 2021
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Letting Our College Experience Teach Us

It’s already July, and while for many people July means summer is just getting started, most college professors are already starting to think about the new school year. The start of a new school year is always nostalgic for me. I have loved school all my life—which is why I never wanted to leave it.…
July 13, 2021
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Unraveling and Hope

When the Moravian bishop and education reformer John Amos Comenius died in 1670, he was just a few chapters short of completing his 7-volume General Consultation on the Reform of Human Affairs (De rerum humanarum emendatione consultatio catholica). This ambitious work ranged across a vast array of topics including philosophy, theology, linguistics, education, politics, and…
July 12, 2021