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Julia D. Hejduk is the Reverend Jacob Beverly Stiteler Professor of Classics and Associate Dean of the Honors College at Baylor University. She has written numerous articles and books on Latin literature, most recently The God of Rome: Jupiter in Augustan Poetry (Oxford 2020), and essays on faith and society for journals such as Public…

The fullness of human community that Dante depicts in the final third of his Divine Comedy becomes more imaginable and compelling if we can see its playfulness and can, in turn, show the importance of play in our present communities, especially communities of learning. With help from James P. Carse’s distinction between finite and infinite…

Can game playing possibly be the ideal of existence? Philosopher Bernard Suits argues that it is, using a twist on the moral logic of Aesop’s fabled grasshopper. While many philosophers have weighed in on this question, none have done so with a Christian lens. In this article, we consider Suits’s body of work on the…

Understanding the role that exercise ought to play in a Christian’s vocation requires a clear understanding of what exercise is: Is it a form of work or of play? In this paper, I argue that although exercise evokes play in a number of ways, it is principally a form of work because it is extrinsically…

Comparatively studying the Hindu theologies of lila and the Christian theologies of play can provide a common ground for interreligious dialogue on divine delight, divine presence, and human flourishing. In doing so, Christians can aim to build a robust and embodied theology of play that affirms similarities and identifies differences with other faith traditions while…

Work and play are often seen as the antithesis of each other, and twentieth-century scholars of play often used their writings on play as an indictment of industrial work. However, a worldview that incorporates God’s Kingdom in the here and now as redeemed but not yet restored provides room for play in all realms of…

Shame and guilt are important concepts within Christian theology. In much of the literature, however, these two concepts are lumped together, offering little if any distinction between them. By contrast, evidence-based psychological research on the topics of shame and guilt has flourished over the past 30 years, offering a careful and important distinction between shame…

This article proposes that Transformative Learning Theory (TLT), particularly in light of recent advances in cognitive linguistics, is a fruitful means of teaching and interpreting tensions within Scripture. One of the key distinctions of TLT is that deep learning involves a crucial change in the learner, often induced by a crisis or a “disorienting dilemma”…

Some Christian students in the sciences may encounter apparent tensions at the interface of science and religion, resulting in struggle, doubt, or loss of faith. While the content of these tensions is often addressed in the classroom, the experiential process of struggle is not often addressed. The goal of this paper is to explore two…

Creative individuals in every era have produced works that inspire and provoke their fellow citizens, challenging them to both confront distorted realities and reimagine better lives. Artifacts that have stood the test of time and critical reception usually elicit multiple interpretations among contemporaries and are reinterpreted by future generations. Ulti-mately, said works were eventually embraced…

This introduction gives an overview of mimetic theory’s three core ideas as first formulated in the work of René Girard, its general reception in the academy, and its close connection to Christianity. It surveys applications of the theory across the disciplines of the social sciences and humanities (as developed more fully by other articles in this theme issue)…

The Bible, in René Girard’s reading, reveals the violent foundations of social order and critiques the scapegoat mechanism used to transform the conflictual mimesis of human culture into unanimous arbitrary victimage. Girard classifies as myth all those conventional narratives that have been used to justify foundational violence, concealing the guilt of the persecutors and the…

Though tribalism and conflict have long been a focus of social psychological research, psychology as a discipline has few meta-theories able to serve as organizing principles or prisms for new ways of understanding. This paper draws on the work of philosopher and anthropologist René Girard who uses mimesis (imitation) as a foundational lynchpin for tying…

This collaboration between a social work researcher with expertise in systems of care for those with disabilities and a literary scholar asks whether mimetic theory can shed light on relational dynamics surrounding children with intellectual disabilities. Data came from two sources: field experience with organizations in China and interviews with stakeholders of organizations in Michigan.…

Mimetic theory has received very little attention from economists. This essay by an ap-plied microeconomist may be the first article written on mimetic theory directed primarily at an audience of mainstream Anglo-American economists. It outlines the potential con-tributions of mimetic theory to economics, discussing Rene Girard’s core ideas in terms of economics terminology and concepts.…

In a global digital culture of influencers, followers, and attention-deficit disorders, mimetic theory helps show that imitation shapes much more of human behavior than once thought and that even desire is mimetic. People want what they see others wanting, which often means conflict. It is an idea with complex implications, but its kernel is simple…

Many Christian films released in the last two decades often pitch themselves as a means of evangelizing unbelievers and reassuring the faith of believers. This article uses the film God’s Not Dead as an example of the recent trend in Christian films and argues, using historical parallels, that these films undermine their stated purposes and…

Research on the microbiome is challenging long-held assumptions about human health. These claims are forcing biologists to fundamentally reconsider what it means to be human in a microbial world. This article surveys and addresses the ontological and anthropological claims associated with microbiome research in an effort to answer the question, ‘what does it mean to…

Economic growth is controversial. While economists tend to support it, in recent decades economic growth has been vigorously critiqued from multiple points of view, including from Christian theology and ethics. In this article Edd S. Noell and Stephen L. S. Smith analyze economic growth in light of both economics and Christian theology, and make a…

In the description of Darwin’s life and work, a common assumption is that he gradually lost all belief in God, eventually becoming an atheist. In this article we demonstrate that, while Darwin became more and more sceptical of some aspects of traditional Christian beliefs, he nevertheless saw himself as standing in the natural theology tradition,…