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To follow my previous foray (See Much Ado About Theories Part 1) into how I approach a controversial theorist such as Marx, I’d like to briefly outline a teaching approach I inherited from my late mentor sociologist Russell Heddendorf. In Hidden Threads: A Christian Critique of Sociological Theory, he contrasted the approach taken by Karl…

I’ve taught an undergraduate sociological theory course for 20-some years, and it’s long been one of my favorites. Theories are fascinating phenomena. They can prod people to adjust their gaze, see things anew, step into the shoes of another, and occasionally even shift paradigms. Theories can delight, enrage, puzzle, unnerve, and challenge. They can move…

Brad Leithauser’s new book, Rhyme’s Rooms, is a feast, a palace, a work of beauty that deserves a wide audience beyond the academy, as well as inclusion in any serious course on poetry. It also seems to be Christian scholarship of the best sort: serious intellectual work conversing in a rigorous and diverse secular profession,…

I teach literature today in no small part thanks to Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, Stephen Crane’s realistic novella depicting the impoverished conditions of life in the Bowery at the turn of the twentieth century.This piece has been adapted from an address to the Sigma Tau Delta chapter of Liberty University, delivered March 10,…

As mentioned in yesterday's post, my research undertaken with my graduate students has discovered that Christian graduate education is not very Christian. The marketing, objectives, and curriculum at two-thirds of programs show little sign of Christian influence. Our undergraduate programs may be different, but our graduate programs are really imitations of the secular programs from…

The Christ-Animated Learning blog recently ran a review of Mark Noll’s important book, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind because it was recently reissued with a new preface and afterword. One of the original critiques Noll made concerned evangelical graduate education. He wrote in the original 1994 version, “Nowhere in the Western world is it…

“Are You Going to Go My Way?” Lenny Kravitz Dear Class of 2023, If there is a descriptor of the vice that older generations have perpetrated upon you at this moment, I would label it joylessness. Look at all the dystopian books you were fed growing up, The Hunger Games, Divergent, Mazerunner, Uglies, Matched, etc.…

Andy Crouch first burst onto the Christian scene with his book Culture Making.Andy Crouch, Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2008). This volume is his latest work, and it continues with his earlier focus on the impact of technology on our lives. With a title like The Life We’re Looking…

A few days after Easter, the Wall Street Journal published a story titled “Our Many Jesuses.” The blurb below the headline read: “At a time of shrinking church membership, Jesus remains a uniquely powerful and popular figure in American culture. The great divide is over what he stands for.” Next to the headline were Warhol-esque…

With today's blog, I’m pleased to introduce the spring issue of Christian Scholar’s Review. We open the issue with a symposium addressing the issue of Christian political engagement. The twentieth-century fundamentalist questions, pre-dating Carl F. H. Henry and the later rise of the Moral Majority, of whether Christians should participate in the political sphere are…

I’ve been thinking about burdens again. Often my own, I must confess, but also the kind that I place on others’ shoulders. The question about whether I lift a finger to carry them myself. The times when the others are my students. Creating burdens for students, sometimes difficult ones, is part of the faculty's role.…

In the era of declining enrollments, Christian colleges and universities face two perennial questions: what are the defining features of Christian education, and why are they worth a higher tuition rate than the state school down the road? Christian colleges offer many distinctive features, including chapel, single-sex residence halls, and required courses on theology or…

Editor's note: Due to a technical problem, our posts scheduled for the past two days were not distributed by e-mail. We apologize. This post was originally scheduled for this past Tuesday.  PLG What does Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) Heritage Month look like on your campus? I speculate that, if celebrated, it includes events…

Encouraging signs suggest that a revival of Christian art could be gathering strength. New publications, workshops, conferences, communities, websites, and leaders are in place, working to bring a powerful infusion of spiritual energy into the Body of Christ via the many-faceted vehicles of Christian art. The Art of New Creation draws from the proceedings of…

Editor’s note: This blog is part II of a two-part series based on questions Professor Kim received from his two daughters, Alyssa (7th grade) and Abigail (5th grade), after taking them to his class one day. For Part I see here. Abigail: Do you like your students? Do they like you? Yes, Abigail, I do…

For many faculty with school-age children at home, it is a common dilemma that inevitably comes around a couple of times a year: our children’s school vacation dates (e.g., spring break) rarely align with ours. In the grand scheme of things that truly trouble our world, this is not a big source of angst; but…

Stanley Hauerwas and others have noted how Christian ethics often has been dominated by moral decisionism. Moral decisionism is an approach to ethics that is preoccupied with difficult questions or hard cases of moral dilemmas (e.g., moral quandaries about the beginning or end of life decisions). This way of moral reasoning puts us as individuals…

In my research on Christian higher education, I have found that one of the most important differences between Protestant and Catholic institutions pertains to their executive leadership teams.See for example two recent publications, Perry L. Glanzer, Theodore F. Cockle, Jessica Martin, and Scott Alexander, “Getting Rid of “Church-Related” Colleges and Universities: Applying a New Operationalizing…

Matt Tomlinson, professor of social anthropology at the University of Oslo, has made a major contribution to missiology with this book, although he may not have set out to reach that particular crowd. Tomlinson is an anthropologist trained in linguistic anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania who has spent several decades researching Christianity in the…

A telos means what something is for, the ultimate end at which it aims. The telos of an acorn is to be an oak tree. The telos of a human community is to enable the flourishing of its members, and ultimately of the whole human family. Christianity maintains that the telos of a human being…