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The Doomsayers Are Wrong about Christian Higher Education (and Should Correct Their Alarmist Claims)

The sky is falling rhetoric tends to be overused when it comes to Christian higher education (CHE). This past month, one person tweeted upon learning that Trinity International University is discontinuing residential and in-person undergraduate education, “Christian higher ed is imploding.” This tweet was less reflective of empirical reality and more reflective of the struggles…
March 7, 2023
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You’re Only Human: An interview with Kelly Kapic

You're Only Human by Kelly M. Kapic, Professor of theological studies at Covenant College in Lookout Mountain, Georgia, is a book recently published by Brazos Press (and which recently won a Christianity Today Book of the Year award). The point of the book is clearly stated in the subtitle: “How your limits reflect God’s design…
March 6, 2023
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Singing Stones

Albrecht Durer, Rock Study, ca. 1497, Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria In a memorable exchange from Luke’s gospel, Jesus (as he was wont to do) rebukes the Pharisees. The jubilant events of Palm Sunday are happening. The Pharisees are scandalized and tell Jesus to make His disciples quiet down. In response, Jesus says, “if they keep…
March 3, 2023
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Book Review – Sunset Cue

I once heard a sarcastic remark after attending a poetry reading. Perhaps I made the remark. At any rate, the reading featured a past-middle-aged poet reading newish poems from the latest book—the tenth or so—this poet had written. The sarcastic comment: “I sip my coffee as I gaze on the birdfeeder out my window. I…
March 2, 2023
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Your invitation to publish with Christian Scholar’s Review

Over the past 52 years, Christian Scholar’s Review has published over 1,000 articles and is well on its way to reviewing 4,000 books. Published quarterly, each issue usually showcases 4–5 articles and 8–10 book reviews from the full range of academic fields. In our continual mission to further Christ-animated scholarship, we invite you to add…
February 28, 2023
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Guardener’s Song*

Picture Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rembrandt_-_The_Risen_Christ_Appearing_to_Mary_Magdalen_-_WGA19094.jpg We were flying east across the Atlantic Ocean, anticipating our overnight stop in Amsterdam, and were soon attracted by an interesting message on the headrest in front of us. It announced a celebration of the 400th anniversary year of Rembrandt van Rijn’s birth! Might it be possible for us to join the…
February 27, 2023
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The Limits of Vulnerability

Last fall semester, Beth Madison posted on the CSR blog about vulnerability in the classroom—a vulnerability on the part of professors that could lead to openness from students, and ultimately growth toward wholeness. I’d like to look at the issue of vulnerability from a different angle—that of students’ vulnerability in the classroom—and consider some of…
February 22, 2023
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Can Land Acknowledgements Be Christian?

Baylor University recently published a land acknowledgment (LA). A few other Christian institutions and conferences have also created them (see for example here, here, and here). According to the Baylor University link, “A Land Acknowledgment is a traditional custom that dates back centuries in many Native Nations and communities. Today, land acknowledgments are used by Native…
February 21, 2023
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Is There Hope in Science?

I had my first MRI ever just a few months after my 24th birthday. Two days later, I’d undergo an emergency craniotomy to remove as much as possible of a baseball-sized tumor that had, unbeknownst to me, been slowly invading my otherwise healthy brain. I soon received my diagnosis: brain cancer, the slow growing sort…at…
February 17, 2023
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Introducing the Christian Scholar’s Review Winter Issue

Sometime in the next few weeks, it will be the third anniversary of the moment when each of us realized that the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 would not remain isolated to Asia and a couple of cruise ships but was bearing down across the globe. On March 10th, 2020, I shrugged off The Atlantic article titled…
February 15, 2023
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Kiss of Death

John Everett Millais, A Huguenot, on St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1852 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Huguenot,_on_St._Bartholomew%27s_Day In 1852, the pious British artist John Everett Millais (who has been featured elsewhere in this blog), painted a heart-rending image called A Huguenot, on St Bartholomew’s Day. Here, beside an ivied wall, two young lovers furtively embrace. The air is thick and the…
February 14, 2023
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Here’s Your Assignment

During focus group research for the book Digital Life Together, two secondary school students offered the following reflections about what happens when their teachers assign reading tasks: we'll ask , "can we skim it and just look for the answers?" And they're, like, "No, I actually want you to read it".  … One of my…
February 13, 2023
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Sacramental Vision as Faith Integration*

“It is a triumph of science to have, in some degree, described the electron, and preposterous to suggest is has been explained.” —Marilynne Robinson, The Givenness of Things Faith integration is a task integral to the vocation of Christian education. It’s become a buzzword and identity marker: good Christian education means robust faith integration. Faith…
February 10, 2023
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A Catholic among Protestants

Born and raised in Puerto Rico, I belong to a Roman Catholic family that went to Mass every Sunday, prayed the rosary every day during the month of October to honor Mary, the mother of Jesus, and went to pre-dawn Mass during the Advent season before Christmas. My brothers were altar servers and my parents…
February 8, 2023
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The Pedagogy of Improv

For Christmas 2021, my wife got me the gift of improv comedy classes. We happen to have an improv comedy theater right here in our little Chicago suburb, and she signed me up for a Level 1 class. She says I brought up the idea at some point—I certainly don’t remember doing that—but I was…
February 6, 2023