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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…

Virtue ethics has made impressive inroads into the business academy. However, the prospects of the development of virtues in the actual practice of business remain in doubt. Among the most influential skeptics is Alasdair MacIntyre, who argues that business institutions must focus on “external goods” (material rewards and prestige) which threaten the development of “internal…

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…

Empirical research on work as a calling has grown exponentially over the last two decades; it is now a global and vibrant area of scholarship within the fields of psychology and organizational behavior. Results emerging from research on calling address questions of major interest to Christians, yet remain almost entirely overlooked within contemporary Christian discourse…

In the sixteenth century, Martin Luther dramatically reformed the Christian concept of vocation, de-emphasizing the long-standing distinction between the clergy and the laity. Scholars rightly point to Luther as a key figure in this shift; however, he sometimes receives so much attention that one might easily miss the nuanced ways in which some earlier medieval…

An infusion of vocational exploration within the undergraduate science curriculum could provide a path toward more effective healthcare and more significant scientific discoveries. students who pursue these careers often do so because they have a strong desire to help others; yet undergraduate science programs do not typically provide extensive training in communicating with others and…

Using a student assignment on the philosopher Charles Taylor as a case study, this essay argues that teaching about vocation and calling can help students see that a call from God need not be entirely nebulous, emotional, and individualistic in nature. Rather, although there are important nebulous and emotional aspects to vocation, the concept might…

Over the past two decades, there has been a surprising resurgence of interest in, and appreciation for, the relevance of vocational exploration in higher education. Indeed, helping students see themselves as people who are called, and helping them discern how they might be called, seems increasingly timely, even urgent. This essay argues that vocational exploration…