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The Confessional Task of the Christian University

For well over twenty years, Christian scholars and educators of various disciplines have been engaged in an examination of the nature of Christian and secular higher education. Much of that reflection with regard to the North American context in particular has turned on one of two types of examinations. The first type is comprised of a…
October 15, 2018
Article

The Evangelical Mind in the Digital Fields

It is hardly possible to examine comprehensively the state of the evangelical mind today without giving careful attention to the impact of digital media. The rise of digital mediaIn this article I will have in mind a broad definition of “digital media” as digitized content transmitted over the Internet and computer networks. This would include…
July 15, 2018
Article

Christ the Center: An Evangelical Theology of Hope

As the cultural influence of evangelical Christianity in the West wanes, the lack of consensus among evangelicals about their own identity grows. In this paper, I will propose that evangelicals need a more robust theological, biblical, and Christological account of hope that will, in turn, inform an ecclesiology centered on the living Word. Toward that…
July 15, 2018
Article

On the Evangelical Mind and Consulting the Faithful

As we near the twenty-fifth anniversary of Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, those who wish to make sense of its legacy confront a rather curious puzzle. If the book aimed to energize a generation of evangelicals to establish themselves in elite universities, to produce credible, meaningful scholarship, and to leave a record…
July 15, 2018
Article

People of the Magazine? Evangelical Innovation for Cultural Engagement amid Technological Change

American evangelicals have always been innovators in communication technology. Dating at least to the early decades of the Republic, we formed parachurch organizations to leverage business strategies and resources and capitalize on the latest forms of technology in an effort to spread the good news.David Paul Nord, The Evangelical Origins of Mass Media in America,…
July 15, 2018
Article

Anti-Intellectualism and the Integration of Faith and Learning

How have evangelical faculties fared in their efforts to move beyond the scandal Mark Noll so sharply exposed nearly a quarter of a century ago? This is the question I take up in this essay, writing as a mid-career faculty member of a Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) institution. What follows are historical…
July 15, 2018
Article

The Parachurch Down Under: A Case Study

A Scottish clergyman once described Australia as the “most godless place under heaven.”James Denney, as cited in Thomas R. Frame, Anglicans in Australia (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2007), 125. Although his comment was ill-informed, as a provocative statement it clues us in to something of a popular sentiment regarding the religiosity of…
July 15, 2018
Article

Addressing the Evangelical Mind-Body Problem: The Local Church as Learning Organization

are those who have become lifelong learners and lovers of others. … We have entered the story of another people, Israel, and we entered as learners.—Willie James Jennings, “The Place of Redemption: Putting the Church on the Ground”Willie James Jennings, “A Place of Redemption: Putting Church on the Ground” (lecture, Slow Church conference, Englewood Christian…
July 15, 2018
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What is the State of the Evangelical Mind on Christian College Campuses?

Does Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind still have relevance today, more than two decades after its publication in 1994?1Mark Noll, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994). As a historian who has spent 16 years in a Christian college affiliated with the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU)…
July 15, 2018
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Psychological Contributions to Understanding Prejudice and the Evangelical Mind

Much has been written about evangelicalism and the scandalous or otherwise state of the evangelical mind from historical and theological perspectives.See, for example, Harriet A. Harris, Fundamentalism and Evangelicals, Oxford Theological Monographs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998); George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture: The Shaping of Twentieth Century Evangelicalism, 1870–1925 (New York: Oxford University Press,…
July 15, 2018
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Having Kids: Assessing Differences in Fertility Desires between Religious and Nonreligious Individuals

Although it is empirically established that traditional religion enhances fertility, how it increases childbearing is not clear. This paper is an exploratory qualitative study investigating how religion influences decisions about intended fertility and family size. Most specifically, Michael Emerson and George Yancey ask how, if at all, do the religious understand children and family differently.…
April 15, 2018
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A Christian Perspective on Belonging: A Case Example of a Gentrifying Urban Neighborhood

When neighborhoods gentrify, residents can be physically displaced as well as psychologically displaced. This psychological displacement can occur even if the resident is not physically displaced. In this article, Keith E. Starkenburg and Mackenzi Huyser explore the significant impact that neighborhood changes have on one’s attachment to place as expressed through the concept of Christian…
April 15, 2018
Article

The Security of the Self: The Bazaar Versus Contemplation

This paper by Dennis L. Sansom examines and compares the ideas about the nature of the self in the twelfth-century theologian St. Peter of Damaskos and the twenty-first-century philosopher Richard Rorty. Peter understands the self as a flexible reality defined by a person’s ability to orient intentions, desires, and beliefs toward ever increasingly important ontological…
April 15, 2018