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Receiving another person’s story is always a privilege. Whether in therapy, confession, interview, or conversation, when one person willingly shares a part of their narrative, they are offer vulnerability and intimacy along with their history. It is a privilege to be offered such a human connection. Recently my institution held its once a semester Advising…

(Choirs of Angels, Scivias I.6, https://arthistoryproject.com/artists/hildegard-von-bingen/scivias-i.6-the-choirs-of-angels/) Among medieval Catholic saints (think Catherine of Siena, Anthony of Padua or Joan of Arc), Hildegard of Bingen is one of the most palatable to modern tastes. She was not prone to shocking self-mortifications; she was not embroiled in muddy political disputes; and she has not been subjected to…

Today millions of Americans will celebrate Thanksgiving, and some, at least, will find a historical precedent for what they are doing in the Pilgrims’ celebration on the coast of Massachusetts in 1621. Although frequently embellished and sometimes caricatured, the story of the Pilgrims’ “First Thanksgiving” is rich with insight and inspiration. The Pilgrims were human,…

Christian Scholarship has a distribution problem. More than ever the Church needs Christian public intellectuals. Here's how you can help.

This article first appeared in Current. Love of God and neighbor are at stake in the battles over liberal learning  In his journal entries for September 8 and 9, 1960, the Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton explores the importance of “being able to rethink thoughts that were fundamental to people of other ages, or…

The August 9, 2021 edition of Chemical and Engineering News (C&EN) featured a story in the field of structural biology entitled “How Transcription Gets Its Start.” Transcription is the biochemical process that occurs in every cell in the human body when protein synthesis is initiated. It is a complex series of steps that begin in…

Here’s an open secret: professors do not go into teaching for the grading. Cliché, I know, but for most of us, grading is the necessary cost of doing what we love: leading lively discussions, preparing thought-provoking lectures, writing ground-breaking books or articles, and mentoring students. Grading, on the other hand, is just, well, grating—at least…

When visitors enter the museum at Wheaton College’s Marion E. Wade Center, which archives work about and by C.S. Lewis and six of his British influencers, they are treated to an eye-popping display of 53 book covers from famous works: The Two Towers from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Lewis’s Perelandra, Sayers’s first Lord Peter…

Editor’s Note:  Dr. Reynolds’ post is part of a once a week series we have been doing on the recent book, Power Women: Stories of Faith, Motherhood, and the Academy. You can find previous posts here, here, here, here, and here. The recent CSR series on the book Power Women, as well as the book itself,…

When our son moved into a dormitory as a Calvin College student in the 1980s I had already been on the faculty there for fifteen years. But suddenly I experienced the campus in new ways. I had known all along, of course, that there were dormitories, parties, various student services, and the like. But that…

This essay is the third, and final, part of a series on embodiment and the Christian liberal arts. In the First Part, I argued that mind/body dualism has left students, and many Christians, inhibited in their ability to fully love God with their whole selves. Embodiment is largely a negative experience, in which shame and…

This essay follows my earlier contribution in Part I, in which I argued that Christian embodiment is too often one of hierarchical dualism, alienation, and social separation. As those called to live in the reality of God’s redemptive work, we should seek out for ourselves, and inculcate in students, an embodiment of whole-ness, emotional and…

A colleague in the theology program here at Wheaton College once told me that of all the things she teaches to our Christian students—all the heresies, misunderstandings, failed theologies they bring to college—the thing that most blows their minds is the clear scriptural teaching of the resurrection of the body. It is not that this…

Colossians 3:23 - “Whatever your task, put yourselves into it, as done for the Lord and not for your masters, since you know that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you serve the Lord Christ.” It was late. Really late. My husband and I were running—literally running—through the airport to…

“And this is explained by collectivism…” I cringe inside every time it occurs. During a presentation or classroom discussion, a student will articulate a cultural difference and follow up with an explanation that, with a certain degree of finality, labels the observed difference as a result of collectivistic or individualistic (C-I) cultures. But the elaboration…

New Christian campuses are emerging all over the nation full of students eager to learn how to minister to their peers. Showing impressive signs of growth and stability, these campuses are currently found in nineteen states with ten more states set to launch soon. Collectively producing thousands of graduates with accredited degrees from over ten…

Christ-Animated Learning could occur in plenty of unexpected domains.  Consider student conduct codes. As part of a larger research project, I have spent time looking at 366 student conduct codes from Protestant colleges and universities in America. One would think that these codes would be an ideal place for some Christian moral education to occur.…

Editor’s Note: Prof. Ndethiu’s post is part of a series of blog posts on the recently published book: Power Women: Stories of Faith, Motherhood, and the Academy. You can find previous posts here, here, here, and here. Motherhood is a profound gift. I was immensely privileged to have the most wonderful biological mother, and then…

In a senior-level course, I require students to read primary texts that many find a stretch in a conservative Christian university. Texts include articles and chapters by a scholar promoting Marxism—James Berlin; a radical black lesbian feminist—bell hooks; a leading voice of post-structuralism—Michel Foucault, and a French academic who was a friend of Derrida and…

Thomas Molnar’s review of Albert Camus and Christianity by Jean Onimus (University of Alabama Press, 1970) was CSR’s first book review. The final review of its first 50 years was T. M. Moore’s look at The WEIRDest People in the World by Joseph Henrich (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020). In the intervening decades, CSR has…