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They claim to be eyewitnesses to eternity, spectators to the supernatural. “I’ve seen Heaven” is their audacious claim. “I met God there.” “I’m no longer afraid to die because I know there’s life after death, and it’s more real than real life!” One even described the experience like this: “If you took the one-thousand best…

In graduate school, one of my professors required our class to read a "classic" social psychology text, When Prophecy Fails. The book is based on the account of Dorothy Martin, who in 1954 predicted a world-ending flood that would result in her group’s rescue by flying saucers. But that’s not the interesting part. The interesting…

From Ivan the Terrible, to Suleiman the Magnificent, to Logan Roy on HBO’s “Succession,” are powerful fathers doomed to crush their children? And are “paternal” leaders (like “Papa Joe,” Joseph Stalin) all too likely to sacrifice and exploit the people they’re supposed to protect?  In my Art History classes, one image that reliably provokes discussion…

Why and How We Should Study Culture and Psychology in a Christian Faith Perspective How Should We Approach Culture, Psychology, and Christian Faith? With the love of all neighbors as the basis, I will propose how we might implement studying psychology in a Christian perspective. If the overarching goal is the love of all neighbors,…

“Empty chairs at empty tables…”                                              Les Misérables “We don’t die Christianly on purpose. We have to practice dying. He set his face toward Calvary. It was deliberate. I can set my face toward Calvary. I put one foot in front of the other. It’s the hardest thing in the world.” These were the words of my graduate assistant…

In the upper Midwest, when it is spring and the weather is nice, this is what you talk about. We are all craving the transition from the cold of winter to the hope of spring. I was meeting outside with a student recently, and the idea of March coming "in like a lion and out…

With today’s blog, I’m pleased to introduce the Winter issue of Christian Scholar’s Review. For much of the past century, Christian scholars have turned to the concept of worldview as a primary way to articulate the academic vocation of integrating faith and learning. The popular concept of a Christian worldview is often traced to the…

Teachers Matter. And what matters most about teachers is whether they are learners.  I’ve been unable to track the original source of this quote, but it’s one that I used to present to my pre-service teachers on the opening day of PSY 351 Psychology Applied to Teaching. I wanted them to grab onto the fact…

Until reading Professor Hiebert's blog post, I was not aware of any "war on empathy," which apparently is just the latest in a long line of heinous offenses by today's “political, religious, racial, cishet, conservative coalition.” Goodness. Perry Glanzer wrote a lucid response pointing out that empathy, while an important capacity, is not a virtue,…

How do we place our discipline and our teaching within the Christian narrative? What does it mean, as an academic professor, to submit my subject material to the Word of God as Glanzer suggests? Having already discussed an academic meta-theory and how to redeem it in a Christian context, I want to look more concretely…

I love thinking about the big picture. So it was with a great deal of excitement and hope that I read Glanzer’s post earlier this year on “Christ-Animated Analysis of Academic Theories. In the hubbub of day-to-day teaching it’s easy to focus on the individual notes we have to play and miss the direction of…

In the second part of this blog post, Paul Kim continues to share insights from his colleagues Katie Douglass (practical theologian) and Brittany Tausen (social psychologist) about their co-authored book, Love Your Neighbor: How Psychology Can Enliven Faith and Transform Community. PK: In a recent Christian Scholar’s Review article, you have written compellingly and thoughtfully…

In this two-part blog post, I (Paul Kim) am excited to feature insights from my colleagues Katie Douglass (practical theologian) and Brittany Tausen (social psychologist) about their co-authored book, Love Your Neighbor: How Psychology Can Enliven Faith and Transform Community. This book explores how to love others better through the lens of both psychology and…

“Should my teaching be any different at a Christian college…?”Arlin Migliazzo, “Introduction: An Odyssey of the Mind and Spirit,” Teaching as an Act of Faith: Theory and Practice in Church-Related Higher Education, Fordham University Press, 2003. xix. Most readers of The Christian Scholar’s Review Blog will undoubtedly affirm that yes, in our role as Christian…

As Dennis Hiebert’s post recounted yesterday, Christians have been arguing about empathy. Usually, I find myself, as a Christian moral educator, disagreeing with most parties in this conversation, whether they hail from the theological/political right or left. In this essay, I propose an alternative approach to thinking about empathy that differs from the books and…

Given the military setting of all four verses of their national anthem, Americans have unsurprisingly employed the same rhetoric to declare a “war on poverty” (Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964), a “war on drugs” (Richard Nixon, 1971), a “war on terror” (George W. Bush, 2001), and an ongoing “war on crime.” Nevertheless, commencement by some Americans…

An old word for “good work” is vocation, and another way to say this is to say that our fundamental responsibility, as colleges and universities, is to inspire our students to seek, and help them to discern, their vocations. The NetVUE project has done a lot to revive and expand the concept of vocation beyond…

Students usually come to our institutions with one of three aims in mind: to get a job, to change the world, or to “grow as a person,” as they like to put it. Unsurprisingly, these three aims correspond to the three aims that define contemporary higher ed: to train workers for the economy, to drive…

I was driving north from Edmonton to a Canadian farm family on the 54th parallel. Soon, I would be stopping for tea with them. As I approached Neerlandia, the name of their community, I was startled by a Timber Wolf crossing the road in front of me. A few minutes later, I was even more…

During my graduate studies in philosophy, and later, when I began my teaching career, one of my areas of focus was social-political thought. I concentrated in part on the ancient Greeks, particularly Plato and Aristotle. I dug into the detailed writings of the “social contract” thinkers of the modern period: Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, especially.…