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Welcome to the Christ Animating Learning Blog

Christian Scholar’s Review is pleased to announce the launch of “Christ Animating Learning”—an interdisciplinary and interactive forum focused on the relationship the Christian faith shares with the practices of teaching and scholarship.  “Christ Animating Learning” launched Monday, with posts appearing on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  Readers can access it at https://christianscholars.com/blog/ or sign-up at https://christianscholars.com/newsletter/…
September 9, 2020
Blog

Consider the Snail: Teaching Online and Learning to Breathe

Snails, it turns out, have things to teach us, even for folk with advanced degrees. Things that could be relevant to an online course. Things that carry a faint echo of wisdom’s laughter at the delights of creation, as narrated in Proverbs 8. Things that also have to do with how we use technology for…
September 8, 2020
Blog

Teaching Culture in Covidtide

A new school year is beginning, and I’m thinking about how to teach cultural history.  There are a lot of reasons to get “meta” right now, as a cultural historian. (Specifically, I’m a professor of Art History and Visual Studies.) First, there’s mode of delivery, and the cultural implications of that. If “the medium is the…
September 2, 2020
Blog

Who Are You to Your Students? An Experiment

I am starting this year by asking students to change one of the most important liturgies of the classroom—what they call me.  As David Smith has taught us, if we want to engage in Christian teaching, we need to interrogate all of our classroom liturgies through a Christian perspective.  In this age of identity, the most important…
August 27, 2020
Blog

The Ethnic Church Attendance Gap at Christian Colleges and Universities

Recently, while analyzing interviews from seniors at our university, we came across a curious and disturbing finding.  In three consecutive interviews, non-white students talked about how they had not attended church during their time at the university, and it showed in their own admitted lack of spiritual growth and sense of belonging at the institution.  Puzzled, we…
August 24, 2020
Blog

Christ-Animating Learning: What Do We Mean?

For many years, Christian’s Scholar’s Review has proclaimed that “its primary objective is the publication of peer-reviewed scholarship and research, within and across the disciplines, that advances the integration of faith and learning…” Despite the historic use of “integration” language, we have decided to instead focus on “Christ-Animating learning.”  Why do we now propose a…
August 19, 2020
Blog

How Did Christians Approach Pagan Learning?

When the early Church began building its own educational tradition, it faced the challenge of how developing this new Christian revelation should interact with Greek and Roman thinking. They had to ask, as the early Christian thinker Tertullian did, “What indeed does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?”Tertullian, Prescription against Heretics, 1:7. Various Church Fathers…
August 17, 2020
Blog

What a Christian University Education Is and Isn’t

Jesus gave us two extraordinary commands: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength,” and “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:29-31). Christian universities exist because we need help with this endeavor, particularly as life becomes more complicated. Even…
August 12, 2020
Blog

Improving Campus Racial Climate at Christian Colleges and Universities

Elijah G. Jeong is a doctoral  student completing a Ph.D. in higher education studies and leadership at Baylor University and has served in various educational and ministry settings, including working as a high school teacher, a college administrator, and as a pastor for an Asian-American church.  This blog post is taken from his recent co-authored …
August 11, 2020
Blog

Christian Scholar’s Review Blog: Mission Vision and Strategy 2020

Mission Christian Scholar’s Review Blog seeks to serve as an interdisciplinary forum for discussing how Christ animates learning.  Audience Due to the easy global reach of the digital medium, our audience will be Christian academics, graduate students, and students worldwide. In particular, we envision becoming a resource and conversation platform for young and developing Christian…
August 5, 2020
Blog

The Resurgence of Christian Scholarship

Things that grow big start small. The January Series at Calvin College fits the pattern. More than 30 years ago it began as a lunch-break lecture series for first-year students enrolled in a three-week exploration of “Christian Perspectives on Learning,” with a mix of local faculty and guest speakers. As its founder June Hamersma was…
April 13, 2018
BlogFeatured

On the Possibility of a Distinctly Christian Theology

Editorial note: This reflection from Alvin Plantinga is part of a curated discussion on “Christian Perspectives in Higher Learning.” See David Hoekema’s introduction to that discussion here. First of all let me say it’s a very great pleasure to take part in this panel. Some people, as I have discovered, impolitely referred to us as…
Alvin Plantinga
April 13, 2018
Blog

The Renaissance of Christian Philosophy

Editorial note: This reflection from Nicholas Wolterstorff is part of a curated discussion on “Christian Perspectives in Higher Learning.” See David Hoekema’s introduction to that discussion here. Our topic is the remarkable renaissance of Christian thought that has taken place over the past 50 years or so and the role of Calvin College in that…
Nicholas Wolterstorff
April 13, 2018
Blog

A Gospel That Speaks to All of Life

Editorial note: This reflection from Richard Mouw is part of a curated discussion on “Christian Perspectives in Higher Learning.” See David Hoekema’s introduction to that discussion here. I need to begin by saying how pleased I am to be on the platform with these fellow panelists, who are also cherished friends. The other three presenters…
Richard Mouw
April 13, 2018