Editor’s Preface

On August 31, 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson greeted the newest members of Harvard University’s Phi Beta Kappa chapter with an address titled “The American Scholar.” Emerson had abandoned Christian orthodoxy and even Unitarianism for Transcendentalism. However, he had yet to emerge as the leading figure of the intellectual collective who eventually congregated out in Concord.…

When we receive a manuscript that looks promising for publication, I often ask its authors to keep two things in mind as they work on revisions. First, I ask them to make it clear why people should care about their topic, reminding them that the bulk of their readers will not likely be in their…

Does virtue and character matter in business? Can workplaces be transformed by the caliber of people present? What insights do scripture and the Christian tradition of theological and philosophical reflection offer for the challenges of the modern workplace? In October 2023, twenty-five theological ethicists, business ethicists, economists, and philosophers gathered in New Orleans to explore…

Over Thanksgiving weekend in 1973, a diverse group of more than fifty North American-based evangelical academics, publishers, and church leaders—both young mavericks and more senior statesmen—gathered at the Downtown Chicago YMCA to discuss the need for greater evangelical social concern. The impetus for the conference had occurred earlier in the spring at the first Calvin…

Being the editor of Christian Scholar’s Review is a great gig. I consider it a deep privilege to work with senior scholars who have published with us. Their wisdom and humility come through in pieces that are jargon-free and thought-provoking for other scholars and students alike. But I really love coming alongside junior faculty to…

The 20th-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 long gone. The fact that “evangelical” is now often understood within and without the Church as a political rather than theological marker has led to no little handwringing…

Sometime this winter 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, I shrugged off The Atlantic article by Yascha Mounk titled “Cancel Everything”…

It’s not surprising that we are creatures of habit, a consistent finding across multiple subfields of psychology. We mostly go through our days with preferred rhythms of sleeping, eating, working, playing, and engaging with others. But habits and preferences shape more than daily big-ticket items. They also influence the nanosecond processes by which we perceive…

Nobel prize-winning social psychologist Daniel Kahneman and his colleague Amos TverskyDaniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, “Choices, Values and Frames,” American Psychologist 39.4 (1984): 341-350. discovered a quirk in the perceived value of everyday items. Referred to as the bias toward “loss aversion,” they found that people tend to see more monetary value in things they…

With this issue we celebrate fifty years of God’s faithfulness to Christian Scholar’s Review. As with any anniversary we look to our past, consider the current status of Christian scholarship, and look forward with thanksgiving and some trepidation to the next fifty years. We have also given ourselves a bit of a gift, sprucing up…