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Last year a group of provosts convened to engage in conversations about Emerson’s essay, “The American Scholar.” Over the period of a year, we looked for insights into the role of the Christian scholar by reflecting on Emerson’s description of the ideal American scholar. He admonished the American scholar to break free from the European…

A Tale of Two Emersons In the little New England town where I grew up, two roads were named after Ralph Waldo Emerson—different roads sharing one name. Our split-­level home sat on a half-­acre plot by a meadow; while I lived on this quiet Emerson Road, there was another Emerson Road less than a mile…

In 2011 Pepperdine University hosted a conference in which Francis S. Collins offered the keynote address. His credentials are extraordinary: Collins is an accomplished research scientist, physician, director of the Human Genome Project, and subsequently director of the National Institutes of Health for three consecutive United States presidents. A devout Christian believer, he authored The…

The American Scholar On August 31, 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson stepped into the pulpit of First Parish Meetinghouse in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to deliver what would become one of the defining lectures of his life and legacy, “The American Scholar.” Harvard University, having celebrated its bicentennial anniversary not even a year before, was a bastion of…

What we choose to eat impacts not only our health, but also contributes positively or negatively towards sustainability and justice. How food is produced determines its impact on environmental sustainability  through pollution, soil erosion, ground water depletion, and biodiversity conservation. A food systems lens looks beyond production to consider the complex social issues linking food…

The contemporary concept of strategy is problematic when viewed from ethical and theological perspectives. This concept arose historically from the political-military context of conflicting interests and maneuvers to gain power. When transferred to the realm of business, the concept retained the assumption of conflicting interests expressed in moves and countermoves attempting to achieve advantages over…

Every business is a social structure. Critical realist sociology tells us that social structures influence the decisions that persons within them make by presenting restrictions (penalties for violating norms) and opportunities (rewards for taking up advantages offered), that frequently alter those nonetheless free decisions. Thus, a business can encourage or discourage virtuous decisions, and over…

“When a person’s virtue is not equal to his position, all will suffer.” When education fails to foster virtue in professional and especially business schools the world is in peril. This essay addresses some of the significant challenges in educating practically wise business professionals. Universities need to recover a Thomistic view of practical wisdom that…

Over the past two decades, the Faith & Work movement has highlighted the potential impact of Christians in business when they serve and work with purpose. To achieve this, a framework for Biblical business practice is needed. This paper integrates Biblical foundations with business research to create a wisdom-based framework for impactful business strategy. By…

We are pleased to publish the text of the 24th Paul B. Henry Lecture, delivered at Calvin University on April 4, 2023. The annual lecture is sponsored by the Paul B. Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics, located at Calvin University. The lecture and the institute are named in honor of Paul…

How can evangelical communities work together amidst differences to cast a vision for gospel witness? This article focuses on the origins, process, and legacies of the 1973 Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern, with reflections on its challenges to Christian higher education today. The process of crafting this document and its resulting institutional and sociocultural…

This essay recounts the history of The Gordon Review, a journal produced from 1955 to 1970 as an independent effort of several Gordon College faculty. Among Christian scholars from a more evangelical tradition, this journal was the earliest systematic effort to publish interdisciplinary scholarship integrating the Christian faith. The Gordon Review exhibited a particular approach…

We illuminate conspiracy rumormongering by viewing it through the lens of Christian psychology. We propose that at the core of the anxiety and anger characteristic of much conspiracist discourse is a fundamentally unbiblical existential understanding of God leading to unbelieving responses to uncertainty and vulnerability stemming from human finitude. One fallen response to uncertainty is…

At the heart of human existence is erotic desire. This erotic desire lurks behind the scenes in Marilynne Robinson’s Jack. In the fourth volume of Marilynne Robinson’s quartet that centers around Gilead, Iowa, the character Jack takes center stage. He has haunted the background in many of the subsequent novels, but in Jack, one encounters…

Much has been written about Christian media criticism. First, I survey the field’s major works to identify four types of Christian media criticism. Next, I offer a critical perspective that puts the sacramental view of media and the concept of transposition in conversation. By reviewing the award-winning film Minari with this perspective in mind, I…

In light of increasing challenges and pressures in higher education, small liberal arts colleges struggle to maintain their identity and sense of institutional vocation. In too many instances—and stemming from both external attack and internal loss of purpose—liberal arts institutions sometimes seem to have forgotten what it means to offer a broad-based, interdisciplinary, and transformative…