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Response to Black, Kaemingk, and Weithman

Let me begin by warmly thanking Amy Black, Matthew Kaemingk, and Paul Weithman for their generous and challenging comments on my essay, “Fidelity in Politics.” I have found it both enjoyable and instructive to reflect on what they say. In my response to their comments, I will begin with comments on some intellectual issues that…
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Advice to Christian Historians

Almost forty years ago Alvin Plantinga’s memorable “Advice to Christian Philosophers” set out a three-fold challenge to encourage members of his own academic tribe, but also “Christian intellectuals generally.” First, “to display . . . more independence of the rest of the philosophical world”; second, to “display more integrity in the sense of integral wholeness”;…
May 8, 2023
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Re-considering Scholarship Again: Knowledge, Community, and the Work of Christian Scholarship

Scholars at Christian institutions have inherited from the broader academy an archival definition of knowledge that tends to obscure relationships between academic scholarship and broader human enterprises. This essay builds upon and extends the work of Ernest Boyer and others who have advocated for a stronger link between scholarship and human communities. It argues that…
May 8, 2023
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Enabling Evangelicalism: How a Renewed Vision of Church as an Alternative Community of Reconciliation Necessitates the Inclusion of People with Disabilities

The marks of evangelicalism (biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism) support the inclusion of people with disabilities; however, research reveals that having a disability label, especially a developmental disability, is a reliable predictor of whether people and families are present within the church. Using disability studies to identify how certain historical, social, and theological veins within…
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American Christianity and the New Eugenics: Consumerism, Human Genetics, and the Challenge to Christian Personhood

American Christianity’s participation in the twentieth-century movement commonly termed the “old eugenics” helped enable eugenic policies that contributed to human rights abuses and social divisions. While churches have attempted to restore their reputations from the stain of that period, what some are calling the “new” or “consumer” eugenics has emerged a century later with markedly…
February 14, 2023
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Small Is Vulnerable: Anthropology at Christian Colleges and Universities

Anthropology and other small disciplines enjoyed a period of growth in the late twentieth century and now face reduction and reconfiguration in a ferociously competitive economic and enrollment context. This article describes anthropology’s presence in courses, programs, and faculty positions at Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) member institutions and discusses the vulnerabilities of…
February 14, 2023
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E. Stanley Jones: Actor in God’s Network Theory

Communication was a crucial element of E. Stanley Jones’s effectiveness as a missionary, spokesman, and advocate in India and across the world. From friendship with Mahatma Gandhi, his influence on Martin Luther King Jr., to his founding of the worldwide Christian Ashram movement and Round Table conferences, Jones demonstrated that interconnectedness is a necessary aspect…
February 14, 2023
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Not Fundamentalist, not Conservative, and not Liberal: The Fundamentals and the Mainstream of American Evangelicalism

Everyone knows that American Protestantism generally divided into fundamentalist and liberal camps in the 1920s. And many people know that fundamentalism derives from The Fundamentals, early-twentieth-century tracts that reduced the rich doctrinal heritage of Christianity down to five points of do-or-die orthodoxy. Neither of these putative facts, however, is true. This paper shows that The…
November 8, 2022
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A Christian Framework for Expertise and Biases in Face Processing: Reconciling Modern Research in Face Perception within a Creation, Fall, Redemption Narrative

Adults demonstrate exquisite sensitivity to the characteristics of the human face; indeed, it is one of the few visual categories for which we exhibit near-universal expertise. However, despite this expertise, our recognition abilities for the faces of individuals of different racial backgrounds and ages are significantly impaired, which can negatively affect our interactions with others.…
November 8, 2022
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Going to School with Marilynne Robinson: Sacramental Education as Alternative Paradigm for Faith

Utilizing the essays of Marilynne Robinson, this paper provides an alternative model to faith integration. Rather than a worldview approach, I argue for a sacramental imagination that helps re-enchant and reinvigorates the educational task. As opposed to two separate spheres of knowledge—human knowing and divine knowledge—a sacramental imagination via Robinson sees the divine reality in…
November 8, 2022
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Introduction to the Theme Issue: Conviction, Civility, and Christian Witness

Rick Langer is the Director of the Office of Faith and Learning at Biola University where he is also Professor of Biblical Studies and Theology and the co-director of the Winsome Conviction Project. His publications have focused on applying theology to a wide variety of disciplines including business leadership, disability, suffering, bioethics, and most recently,…
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Speaking the Truth in Love: The Challenge of Public Engagement

The love command is meant to encompass all areas of life for Christians, including Christian public engagement. Given cultural understandings of love, defining love carefully becomes a pressing task. Gorman’s cruciform definition of love helps by defining love negatively, as not seeking our own advantage or edification, and positively, as seeking the good, the advantage,…
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Log in Your Own Eye

Wayne Forte was born in Manila, Philippines in 1950, and studied at the University of California at Santa Barbara and Irvine. Wayne has been a member of CIVA (Christians in the Visual Arts) for twenty-five years and participated in the Florence Portfolio Project in 1993. His works have been exhibited nationally and internationally. © 2010,…
July 15, 2022
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Interview: The Church, the Christian Academy, and the Public Square

Russell Moore is one of the leading Christian voices in the public square today. At the time of this interview, Moore was serving as the President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, which is the moral and public policy agency of the Southern Baptist Convention. Shortly after this interview, he resigned his position and…
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Interview: Rhetoric, Race, and Religion

In July 2021, Tim Muehlhoff and Rick Langer had a lengthy conversation with Theon Hill, a communications scholar whose research delves into the interface between the Black community and white evangelicalism, writing on the relationship between rhetoric and social change—particularly as related to race, culture, and American politics. He has written on the topic of…
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How Intellectual Virtues Can Help Us Build Better Discourse

American civil discourse is in decay. It is commonplace that many citizens not only disagree but do so disagreeably. However, disagreeableness need not be a feature of our discourse. After diagnosing several instances of decayed discourse as failures of intellectual virtue, the article offers suggestions for fostering virtues—such as humility, open-mindedness, and fair-mindedness—that can help…
July 15, 2022