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Christian Education for Librarianship, Part 2: The Current State

In my previous post, I offered the following line of reasoning: (1) The field of librarianship is inherently value-laden and thus subject to examination from a biblical worldview. (2) Few Christian institutions offer a graduate program in library science. (3) Libraries that serve Christian institutions offer the most natural venue for integrating faith and librarianship.…
April 5, 2022
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Christian Education for Librarianship, Part 1: A Rationale

My interest in relating Christian faith to the practice of librarianship emerged about 25 years ago when I was pursuing my master’s degree in library science. I first explored such integration in a class paper that I entitled “The Role of Christian Academic Libraries: Promoting the Theistic Worldview.”A revised version of my paper was published…
April 4, 2022
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What Nursing Students Can Teach Us About Life

“Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith and in purity.” (1 Timothy 4:12 – NIV) In my January 20, 20221 Christ Animated Learning Blog post, I wrote about several ways I offer my students opportunities to…
April 1, 2022
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Don’t Look Up as a Neil Postman Parable

The recently released Netflix movie Don’t Look Up is a satirical film featuring a star-studded cast of actors. The film tells a gripping story about a comet heading for earth as a metaphor for climate change, but it also provides a profound commentary on American politics, entertainment, and social media. Leonardo DiCaprio plays an astronomer…
March 31, 2022
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Advice to Christian Professors of Business

Feelings of tremendous pride well up when I hear about alums who are ascending career ladders on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley, or at locally based tech companies like Amazon. Then, I start to wonder if some of these grads are moving up because they are just good at helping their employers “make money,” but…
March 29, 2022
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Gabriel’s Hello

Author’s Note: By the kind permission of both journals’ editors, a version of this piece with the title “Gabriel’s Word to Woman” is also being published today by Church Life Journal. I am especially grateful for this gesture of Christian solidarity on the Feast of the Annunciation, 2022, the day on which Pope Francis is…
March 25, 2022
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Loving Faces: Community in and after the Time of Pandemic

In the time of pandemic… …we have lived in a mix of virtual and in-person worlds.  As we shift back into a more in-person world, I want to remind myself and others of the importance of community and relationships. Why do we need community? The bigger question might be, why do we need relationships?  The…
March 24, 2022
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Disfiguring the Figure of the Sojourner-Immigrant

As educators, we know the importance of taking advantage of “teachable moments,” those valuable, yet often unexpected, instances in which student interest and eagerness conspire to create a context in which learning a particular idea becomes most accessible or possible. Although I know I have seized some such moments in my classrooms, several have undoubtedly…
BlogReviews

Book Review: The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self: Cultural Amnesia, Expressive Individualism, and the Road to Sexual Revolution

The oft-used analogy that “fish don’t know they’re in water” is a reminder that a worldview, or, in Charles Taylor’s more nuanced phrase, a social imaginary (26), often becomes so taken for granted that we do not notice it anymore. Carl Trueman’s latest book, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, reveals the water…
March 22, 2022
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Languishing? Take Courage, Take Heart

The most-read article in The New York Times in 2021 was not about COVID, not about January 6th, not about the trial of Derek Chauvin, nor about NASA’s helicopter, Ingenuity, flying above the surface of Mars. It was by social psychologist Adam Grant who wrote back in April about languishing,Adam Grant, “There’s a name for…
March 21, 2022
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Guest Post – A Volcanic Tightrope

In March of 2020, famed daredevil Nik Wallenda completed the astonishing feat of walking on a tightrope stretched out across an active Volcano crater in Nicaragua. He stood roughly 2,100 feet above volcanic magma, dawning goggles, a balance beam, and a respirator to protect him from fumes. I wondered what went through his head as…
March 17, 2022
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These are My Students: A Reflection on Three Different Student “Profiles” in My DEI Course

When the Professional Becomes Personal: Opportunities and Challenges for Faculty of Color Teaching DEI Courses Overview of the Blog Series Although they are underrepresented in Christian higher education, faculty of color are overrepresented among those teaching the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) courses – at times, the single DEI course – within their department. For…
March 16, 2022
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Guest Post – The Beautiful Scandal of the Cruciform Mind

Editor’s Note: The William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company releases an updated edition of Mark A. Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind today.  Reflecting upon that book’s longstanding influence, Indiana Wesleyan University’s President David Wright offers this morning’s post, focusing on the impact Noll’s book had since its original release in 1994, his hopes for…
March 15, 2022
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A Serial Entrepreneur’s Unique Journey and Financial Risk to Help Christian Education: Is Amy Smiling?

An odd little book was amongst the cascading vendor enticements at last month’s educational gathering in Dallas, TX. From Walter Kim and Bryan Stephenson to Adelle Banks and Michelle Boorstein, the  Council of Christian Colleges and Universities’ International Forum produced a stellar lineup for its 1100 attendees—and they proved every bit as engaging as their…
March 11, 2022
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Guest Post – Creating a Campus Culture of Loving Judgment (Part 2)

In the last post, I shared how the biblical doctrine of judgment stabilized my own spiritual imbalances and insecurities, thus welcoming me, a sinner, into the presence of a righteous God who treated me better than I deserved. I shared Hamilton’s scholarship, showing God’s glory as revealed in this salvific work of judgment as THE…
March 10, 2022
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Guest Post – Thoughts on engaging a fluid culture with fluid dynamics in Christian education

What role should faith play in Christian education? This philosophical question regularly results in divisive dialogue in certain scholarly circles and—for newly minted faculty—instills a degree of confusion around the gravity of the issue. Under the weight of the school year, it grows easier to jettison this all-important question as pursuing the right funding, pedagogy,…
March 4, 2022