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The “integration of faith and learning” has become a touchstone of many Evangelical Protestant higher education institutions in recent decades. Martin Spence argues that modern Evangelical scholars and teachers have intellectual forbears who long ago raised similar questions about the relationship between faith and learning. The author introduces one such individual, the nineteenth-century British Baptist…

Gretchen Schwarz and Jill Martin argue that contemporary Christian evangelicals often perceive American public schools as evil, and many have retrenched into their own private schools. These schools generally offer a highly traditional, narrow, even classical curriculum. In contrast, Comenius, one of the Reformation era’s outstanding scholars and educators, developed a wealth of ideas that…

In his 2009 essay, “Finite Care in a World of Infinite Need” (CSR 38.3 : 327-333), Stanley Hauerwas suggests that, given the unlimited health care needs and limited health care resources in the U.S., Christians need to imagine an integrally Christian practice of medicine, which may include refusing potentially life-saving treatments. In this response essay,…

While it would seem that Pietism and Postmodernism share little to no common ground, Roger E. Olson notes that in fact there are several points where they are congenial with each other. Pietism was a movement for church renewal among German Lutherans in the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries. Its ethos of conversional piety eventually became…

In the 1980s the idea emerged that psychological problems are often caused by unremembered sexual abuse, and that healing requires retrieval of memory. While much of main-stream psychology later questioned the validity and/or reliability of such memories, many evangelical therapists and ministry leaders have continued to be “carriers” of recovered memory approaches. Using case study…

In this essay David W. Aiken argues that Bernard Lonergan’s contribution to recent Christian thought continues to be undervalued despite its depth, integrative scope, and relevance to contemporary issues. One such issue concerns whether methodological naturalism in the natural sciences warrants a reductionistic metaphysics, anthropology and epistemology. Lonergan’s holistic account of human intelligence and its…

Theologians have long explored the meaning of the biblical notion of the imago dei for our understanding of the complexities of human personhood. In recent years the focus has often been on the “functional-relational,” as opposed to an “ontological,” account of the imago. Richard J. Mouw reflects here on the ways in which these biblical-theological…

In this article, Yvonne S. Smith, Sharon G. Johnson, and Erik M. Hiller explore a theological view of competition. Competition is engrained in Western economic and social systems and Christians are conflicted about it. Is the God of love also the God of the competitive atmosphere of sports, business, or law? Or does God hate…

In this paper, Jack Mulder, Jr. argues that those who hold 1) the major Christological and Trinitarian tenets of the historic Christian faith and 2) the view that original sin and its psychological consequences are in some way inherited and not learned (which includes a wide swath of leading figures in the historic Christian tradition)…

In this essay Julie W. Morgan and Richard K. Olsen explore the utility of a dialectical perspective for approaching and engaging in communication as Christians. After defining dialectics from both historical and critical perspectives, the authors then outline generic dialectics imbedded in almost any communication. The authors draw on the works of Leslie Baxter and…

In this essay, Dan Pinkston argues that the Russian composer Igor Stravinsky and the Irish rock band U2 occupy a similar place of importance within their musical worlds, and have a parallel record of artistic achievement and influence. The parallels in their musical and spiritual development are fascinating and, as this paper will show, give…

Mary Quinn, Laura Foote, and Michele Williams argue that the growth in online learning and in the number of adult students provides opportunities for Christian colleges and universities to reach a larger segment of this population. The authors note that with this opportunity, care must be taken to keep the integration of faith and learning…

Walker Percy (1916-1990) was a Catholic writer whose six novels picture central characters who embark on searches for divine meaning. Rich Gray shows how Percy’s protagonists reject glib secular beliefs and quest toward Christian beliefs. In interviews and essays Percy articulated a theory of the Christian novelist in an agnostic culture, in which the novelist…

In the past two decades the evangelical academy has devoted a good deal of attention to the “Christian scholar” and “Christian scholarship.” While these discussions have born considerable fruit, they lack the scope to cast a vision for Christian higher education in general. Jim Halverson argues that the Christian academy needs to articulate a vision…

In this essay Gillis J. Harp notes that some American Evangelicals find it difficult to conceive of a species of conservatism that preserves a moral political economy and some notion of a paternalistic state protecting the less fortunate. Yet this is the kind of conservatism that characterized the thinking of one key strand within the…

In this essay, Charlie W. Starr argues that evangelical Christians do not know what art is for. In an age when the best that even theologians can offer in response to the arts is “culture war” or “worldview analysis,” Christians who want to find the intersection between faith and film should look to C. S.…

In this essay, Annalee R. Ward explores Gran Torino’s moral order by engaging standpoint theory with Robert Wuthnow’s symbolic boundaries of moral order. In a journey of moral enlightenment, learning to communicate across boundaries anchors the story in hope. Along the way, Walt Kowalski encounters challenges to his moral structures which may affirm a redemptive…

Kon Ichikawa’s 1956 film The Burmese Harp is a powerful depiction of the spiritual journey of a Japanese soldier in Burma immediately following the end of World War II. Stephen Parmelee discusses the nature of this soldier’s search for meaning in the face of suffering; the parallels and differences between this soldier’s search and the…

Mystery, says Joseph G. Kickasola in this essay, is a key component in any film seeking to approach the transcendent. Mystery is a dialectical process, moving between paradox and miracle. The basic characteristics of religious mystery, as articulated by the theologian Louis Dupré, take thematic and formal shape in Paul Haggis’ 2005 Academy-Award winning film…

Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro Iñárritu, and Alfonso Cuarón: Hollywood’s “three amigos” have enjoyed recent financial and critical success and raised the profile of Mexican film-making in the process. In this paper, Scott DeVries finds that the cinematic aesthetics in films from these highly-regarded filmmakers represent the culmination of a long history of Mexican filmmaking, one…