During the last volume year the total number of submissions was eighty-one—slightly above normal—and I remain pleased with the quality of manuscripts we are receiving. Our acceptance-to-publication timeframe is approximately twelve months.
The greater part of my free time over the last year has been working with my co-editors—Perry Glanzer, David Hoekema, Jerry Pattengale, Todd Ream, and Todd Steen—completing work on Taking Every Thought Captive: Forty Years of the Christian Scholar’s Review(Abilene Christian University Press, 2011). I am very happy with the final product and commend my co-editors for all the assistance they provided during the selecting, compiling, and editing process. Also deserving of deep appreciation is Leonard Allen and his staff at Abilene Christian University Press.
The publication of Taking Every Thought Captive is the most visible expression of our year-long celebration of the fortieth anniversary of CSR. Another expres-sion of this celebration was a dinner held at the Intercontinental Hotel (O’Hare) on April 15, 2011. John Wilson, editor of Books & Culture moderated a panel discussion that included Mark Noll and George Marsden in which they discussed the forty-year history of CSR and its connections to and influences on Christian scholarship during that period. The discussion was lively, insightful, and engaging. CSR Publisher David Hoekema and Associate Publisher Jerry Pattengale also offered remarks that may be found below. All in all, it was a wonderful evening and a fitting high water mark of our fortieth anniversary.
Deep thanks and appreciation go to Samuel Seaman (Pepperdine University), outgoing Associate Editor for Business and the Professions, for his invaluable service to CSR; he has done a wonderful job ensuring the high quality of the scholarly essays that we publish. We welcome Walton Padelford (Union University) as our new Associate Editor for Business and the Professions.
The theme issue for summer 2012, “Globalization and Global Trends in Christian Higher Education,” will be guest edited by Janel Curry and Joel Carpenter of Calvin College (see the announcement in this issue). Discussion on the appropriateness of manuscript topics with the guest editors is recommended and encouraged through e-mail: jcurry@calvin.edu or jcarpent@calvin.edu.
I have enjoyed this past year and look forward to 2011-12.
Don W. King
Montreat College
Montreat, NC
July 31, 2011
Opening Comments for 40th Anniversary Banquet, Christian Scholar’s Review by David A. Hoekema, Publisher, CSR; Professor of Philosophy, Calvin College
Let me welcome all of you to the fortieth birthday party of Christian Scholar’s Review! The editors and I are delighted that you are able to join us in looking back at four decades of publishing the best Christian scholarship and looking forward to the years and decades to come. We thank all of you for your contributions to this enterprise. Above all, we thank the Lord whom we serve for enabling CSRto flourish and to enrich the community of Christian teachers and scholars across the United States and Canada and beyond through its quarterly issues.
Let me add a special word of welcome to Mark Miller and his wife Patsy Allen, whose presence reminds us of the work of a founding father and a longtime pillar of CSR, Mark’s father Charles J. Miller. While serving as Professor of History and Assistant to the Provost at Calvin College, Dr. Miller was the catalyst in forming a working group of Christian college faculty members who launched the new journal and set it on the course it has followed ever since. Joel Carpenter, former provost at Calvin and now head of the Nagel Institute for World Christianity, is another of our honored guests this evening. He remembers Dr. Miller as a valued mentor, not only in launching his career as a historian but also in finding a place in the Calvin community despite the seemingly insurmountable handicap of bearing an English rather than a Dutch surname (Miller’s having been the first such name to be found on Calvin’s faculty rosters). Dr. Miller served as managing editor of CSR from its earliest years until the mid-1990s, when Todd Steen first assisted and then succeeded him. The only award that CSR bestows is an annual prize for the best published article, and to honor his memory we have named it the Charles J. Miller Award. We are glad that the Miller family is represented at our celebration this evening.
I have the honor of announcing the publication of an anthology entitled Taking Captive Every Thought: Forty Years of Christian Scholar’s Review, of which Don King is principal editor, assisted by Jerry Pattengale, Todd Ream, Todd Steen, and myself. Leonard Allen of Abilene Christian University Press is with us tonight, having transported several cartons of books directly from the press to our meeting room, and we thank him for the care and dispatch with which the volume has been edited and produced. We hope it will be a useful resource for many and encourage each of you to arrange for wide distribution to your colleagues, at the steep quantity discounts that the press is offering for a limited time.
Four decades is a very long time in the life of a person or a college—indeed, many of you present tonight are younger than the journal. Into what sort of world was CSR born? What signal events in the larger world attended its birth? Here are some of the noteworthy events of the year 1970, when volume I number 1 saw the light of day:
• The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty took effect after being ratified by fifty-six nations;
• Rhodesia declared itself a republic, throwing off British control and sowing the seeds of four tumultuous decades in what is now Zimbabwe;
• The United States launched its military campaign in Cambodia, expanding the scope of the Vietnam War;
• Four antiwar protesters were killed by National Guard troops at Kent State University;
• Fourteen U.S. military officers faced charges in a court martial for the massacre of hundreds of civilians in the village of My Lai;
• The first Earth Day was marked by a nationwide “teach-in”;
• The Apollo 13 mission to the moon was aborted before landing, a “successful failure” for the space program;
• The Public Health Cigarette Act ended the broadcast advertising of tobacco products;
• Black Sabbath released its first album;
• The Beatles broke up;
• Diana Ross left the Supremes;
• Alexandr Solzhenitsyn was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature; and
• President Nixon welcomed Elvis Presley to the White House.
Launched in this tumultuous time, Christian Scholar’s Review represented a bold initiative to sustain and cultivate scholarship that serves both the academy and the church. The Christian colleges whose faculty members came together to lay its foundation are all among our affiliated institutions today, but they were very different colleges at that time than they are today, more distant both from prevailing currents of contemporary culture and from the scholarly life of leading research universities.
Publication of one’s scholarly writing in refereed journals was at that time a signal achievement for a small minority of Christian college faculty, not an expectation of all. Students who enrolled in denominational colleges were mostly members of the sponsoring denominations, and theological divisions often correlated closely with ethnic distinctions both in student bodies and in faculty ranks. Many Christian colleges saw themselves as islands of refuge from a society that was becoming more secular and more bitterly divided. On every campus, to be sure, there were student and faculty voices calling for a more direct and effective engagement of the demands of the Gospel with the wrenching problems of war, poverty, and social injustice. But they were more often simply tolerated than listened to. Change came slowly on these campuses, and their quiet insularity contrasted sharply with the ferment that was raging in the rest of academia.
Those who came together to plan an interdisciplinary journal of Christian scholarship were undertaking a bold and risky venture. With an existing model in mind—a journal until then published by one of their institutions, the Gordon Review—they sought to provide a channel for scholarly communication that would be multi-institutional and interdisciplinary. Its contents would be selected from among submissions through a process of critical review by scholarly peers, and the journal would be disseminated to a broad readership in academia, not just in Christian liberal arts institutions but at research universities as well. Moreover, its support would come from institutions dedicated to the advancement of liberal education and scholarship in a Christian context, and these institutions in turn would appoint the members of its governing body.
These hopes have been fulfilled, and more than fulfilled, in the journal’s four decades. The ranks of sponsoring institutions have grown from the initial half-dozen to nearly four dozen today. When the journal’s legal status was reorganized in the 1990s, from a private trust to a nonprofit corporation, all affiliated institutions became equal partners in governance through their representatives to the editorial board. A succession of gifted and dedicated editors maintained high standards in selecting submissions for publication. All are still living and were invited to join us tonight: George Brushaber, President of Bethel University; Clifton Orlebeke, retired from Calvin College; William Hasker, retired from Hun-tington University; and Roger Olsen, now at Baylor University’s Truett Theological Seminary. None were able to do so, unfortunately; but we have dedicated the anniversary volume to them.
As a result of its long record of rigorously selected and carefully edited articles and reviews, CSR is now indexed in leading bibliographical databases, and its articles are frequently cited in scholarly monographs and peer-reviewed journals in a wide range of fields. But there is another side of the editors’ contribution to Christian scholarship that is not visible in the printed journal: in writing comments for authors whose work is not yet at the level that warrants publication, the editors have taken special care to offer constructive criticism and guidance, particularly to authors in early stages of their careers who do not yet have a substantial record of scholarly publications. Some of the rejected articles undergo revision and eventually appear in our pages; others never reach that point. But the pain of rejection is always tempered by a spirit of collegiality and encouragement.
In both of these ways—by publishing excellent scholarship and by helping to guide those whose work is not yet ready for publication—CSR has provided steady and effective encouragement to faculty members at Christian colleges who seek to share the fruits of their research and reflection with a broad audience. In 1970 it was difficult to find any published articles in major disciplinary journals that looked seriously at the role of religion and theology in any of the major disciplines. Today, thankfully, that is no longer the case. Major scholarly publishing houses and leading disciplinary journals devote considerable attention to scholarship that addresses theological questions in British literature, religious influences on early modern European politics, religious dimensions of developmental psychology, and the like. For Christian scholars, CSR is no longer the only available publication outlet. Yet it continues to attract first-rate submissions from scholars in many disciplines, from its supporting institutions and from other colleges and universities, and it has earned the respect of the academy for the quality of its contents.
I have spent several semesters recently teaching and conducting research in Africa, as director of a Calvin study program in Ghana and as a Fulbright teacher and scholar in Kenya. (There is a CSR connection here: my very first trip to the continent of Africa was at the invitation of the editorial board of an interdisciplinary journal of Christian scholarship published by Daystar University in Kenya. Editor Don King and I spent a week there in May 2001, conducting workshops for faculty on means of encouraging and disseminating scholarly work, and it was to the same university that I returned for a semester in 2010 to teach philosophy and study African political philosophy.) Everywhere I have lived in Africa, I have observed a vibrancy and profound commitment to the Gospel in its flourishing churches. Yet I also find a dearth of critical and sustained intellectual inquiry in the churches and a lack of commitment to broad and deep liberal arts education in Africa’s Christian universities. We are very fortunate in the United States that our Christian institutions of higher education enjoy supportive (even if occasionally contentious) relationships with supporting churches and denominations and that the model of broad preparation in the major disciplines is still the foundation of our curricular requirements. Scholarly journals like Christian Scholar’s Reviewmay seem to operate at several removes from the daily life of church members and students, but I believe they make an indispensable contribution to the nur-turance of an atmosphere of critical and open inquiry, wide-ranging curiosity, and steadfast dedication to the Gospel that characterizes all of our campuses—at least on our best days.
Looking back over forty years of scholarly publication, let us rededicate ourselves tonight to the mission of the journal whose accomplishments we celebrate:
The Christian scholar, experiencing the redemptive love of God and welcoming the enriching perspective of divine revelation, accepts as part of his or her vocation the obligation not only to pursue an academic discipline, but also to contribute toward a broader and more unified understanding of life and the world. This vocation therefore includes the obligation to communicate such an understanding to the Christian community and to the entire world of learning.
The Christian Scholar’s Review is intended as a medium through which Christian scholars may cooperate in pursuing these facets of their tasks. Specifically, this publication has as its primary objective the integration of Christian faith and learning on both the intra- and inter-disciplinary levels. As a secondary purpose, this journal seeks to provide a forum for the discussion of the theoretical issues of Christian higher education. The Review is intended to encourage communication and understanding both among Christian scholars, and between them and others.
Concluding Remarks by Jerry A. Pattengale, Associate Publisher, CSR;Associate Provost for Public Engagement, Indiana Wesleyan University
As we conclude this celebration, it’s perhaps fitting to note that we are at our 40th year while the world celebrates the King James’ 400th. During the last few weeks, I’ve been privileged to help represent the KJV’s anniversary at the Vatican Embassy, the Sagamore Institute, and at Baylor University, and would like to share an observation. That is, that of all articles on the KJV, only 17.5% do not cite Mark Noll.1 In fact, after reading the re-issue of the enjoyable Christian History Magazine, I had to double-check my sources to make sure that Mark wasn’t among the famed forty-seven, that is, the actual 1611 translators. However, I haven’t checked the Douh-Rheims or Geneva sources.2
In all seriousness, as we consider the richness of contributions to CSR during the past 40 years, as we’ve seen again here tonight, we are indeed seated in a great cloud of witnesses.
Like the KJV celebration, we CSR readers are also reminded that a great story is unfolding, and we’re fortunate to capture some of the journal’s institutional history. An institution, after all, is a systematic response to a recurring need. And we are indeed meeting the perpetual need of serious inquiry into important matters of learning and faith. Similar to the literary institution of the KJV, the CSR leadership team is reminded of our mortality, as some of our founding editors are in retirement, along with wonderful professors like Julius Scott. And some of our friends, like Bastiaan Van Elderen and Bruce Metzger, are now with our Sovereign Lord.
CSR demands a mélange of editors, with around 939 articles and 800 reviews published. And during two-score years, there have been about 4,695 rejected articles (based on an average acceptance rate of 20%). Dr. Edwin Yamauchi taught me through his own actions that scholarship involves either new material or a new angle, and the most profound scholarship includes both. Don King reminds us often that articles also demand clarity and coherence. Todd Ream and Perry Glanzer that important scholarship also benefits from relevance. And David Hoekema that many writers may claim that God told them to submit their work, and we’ll just have to wait for Him to tell us to accept it.
CSR remains true to its mission and is also fortunate to be among the few academic journals with a viable business plan and strong bank account, thanks in large part to Todd Steen. We also realize that to make it another forty years, we’ll need a steady flow of submissions, veteran engagement with peers, including young scholars, and innovative leadership. And yes, a continued vetting process that honors well our work before the Lord.
In Debating Moral Education, when Stanley Hauerwas pauses from critiquing Stanley Fish, he profoundly notes that Christian educators are fortunate to be one of the last people groups with a common language and literature. My friends, the CSR contributes to this common experience. Hauerwas also reminds us that the real purpose of Christian colleges is to know how to love God better. Above all else, for his glory to redound to Him. And let that be our charge.3
As we make our own ascents to our own Mt. Pisgahs like our venerated editors before us, we need to find Joshuas. Like Moses, we need to pray for God’s guidance in finding those to anoint, educate, and introduce to our community as the ones taking the work and message across the Jordan into the future.
Guidelines for Contributors
Those who contemplate submitting an article for publication in CSR, or who intend to write an article for the journal, should be guided by the policy statement found on the inside front cover of each issue. They should also, if possible, look at back numbers of CSR for specimens of articles that have been found suitable in length, subject matter, level of scholarship, and approach. Though the editorial staff has undergone changes from time to time, it is safe to assume that CSR’s past and present is a reasonably reliable indicator of its future criteria for editorial evaluation of submitted manuscripts.
It may be useful to add some information about editorial practice and policy:
1. Editorial handling of manuscripts
a. An author need not be a faculty member of a sponsoring institution. Submissions are welcome at any time from any person; however, authors should not make simultaneous submission to CSR and another journal.
b. Manuscripts that are to be considered for publication as articles or re-sponses should be sent to the editor (Don W. King) with the author’s name deleted in electronic format using Word or WordPerfect on a Windows compatible disk or as an e-mail attachment. The author should also pro-vide contact information, including academic affiliation as appropriate. Manuscripts that are to be considered for publication as book reviews should be sent to the book review editors: Todd Ream (Todd.Ream@indwes.edu) or Perry Glanzer (Perry_Glanzer@baylor.edu).
c. Manuscripts will be screened by the editor. If a manuscript is obviously unpublishable, the author will be notified promptly with an explana-tion. If worthy of further consideration, it will be acknowledged and placed in the hands of an associate editor for evaluation, usually with the advice of referees. The final decision about publication is made by the editor, who will inform the author. The process normally takes from three to six months.
d. The editor and associate editors will be aware of the contributor’s identity, but it is CSR’s policy to send submissions to referees “blind,” without identifying the authors. In pursuance of this policy, it is requested that authors identify themselves only in a separate e-mail letter.
2. Criteria for publishable articles
a. Length: Typically 15 to 25 pages of double-spaced text for articles; 2 to 3 pages for responses; 3 to 5 pages for reflection pieces.
b. Fit: The article should be written for CSR with a view to its particular standards and purpose. Unrevised lectures, chapel talks, and the like are not acceptable.
c. Currency: Since CSR is a journal, its articles should address matters of current importance. When the subject matter is one of the “perennial questions,” the author should do more than repeat what has been said already in places that are readily accessible to other scholars.
d. Scholarly level: CSR accepts no undergraduate papers. It accepts interpre-tive or critical summaries of one or more books, poems, stories, etc., only if in the judgment of the editors the author’s contribution is significantly original. The ideal CSR article reveals a quality of scholarly depth, of mastery without ostentation. A specialist in the field of the article should be able to tell that the author knows the relevant problems, arguments and literature pertaining to the subject; a non-specialist, on the other hand, should not feel excluded from a private scholarly domain.
e. Interdisciplinary breadth: Since CSR intends to be attractive and intel-ligible to scholars in all disciplines, its authors are asked to make a particular effort to communicate across disciplinary lines. They should avoid, where possible, esoteric language, and they should not presuppose information normally possessed only by specialists. Opening sentences and paragraphs are especially important: if they are clear and provocative, they will help to draw the reader into the essay.
f. Christian perspective: The author may assume that his or her readers are generally familiar with, and sympathetic to, the Christian religion. While this assumption does not preclude articles that address topics in apologetics and philosophy of religion, including discussion of the rational justification of Christian belief, it does free the author from an obligation to provide such justification. Most sponsoring institutions of the CSR are evangelical and Protestant; its editorial policy, however, is ecumenical.
3. Style
a. Submit your manuscript in electronic format using Word or WordPerfect as an e-mail attachment.
b. Ensure that your final manuscript follows The Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition; manuscripts cannot be published until they are prepared according to The Chicago Manual of Style.
c. Follow Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition, for spelling and hyphenation. Follow American rather than British rules for spelling. In languages other than English, insert all diacritical marks, preferably by using accents on the font being used. Avoid using e.g. or i.e.
d. All text (including extracts within the text, footnotes, etc.) must be double-spaced and in 12 point Times Roman font.
e. Except as listed below, avoid all typographic embellishments, including bold, italics, underline, centering, type ornaments (dingbats), and words typed in all capitals.
f. Type one space after periods, colons, and semicolons.
g. Footnotes rather than parenthetical citations should be used; refer to the Chicago Manual for formatting guidelines. Use superscript for the footnote numbers in the text and for the footnote numbers themselves. In the text, no space should precede the footnote number. In the footnotes, no period or space should follow the footnote number.
h. Book, journal, magazine, or film titles should be italicized rather than underlined.
i. Left justify all text; do not full justify. Begin new paragraphs by typing a hard return and indent each paragraph .5 inch using a tab; do not use the space bar to indent. Do not insert extra space between paragraphs. Extracts should be indented from the left margin .5 inch using the indent command in your word processing program.
j. If your manuscript is divided into parts, type each heading in bold. If your manuscript is divided into subparts, type each subheading in italics. Do not number headings or subheadings. Type all headings and subheadings in upper and lower case; avoid all capitals, underlining, or other embellishments.
k. Use the en dash and em dash as appropriate, rather than the hyphen or two hyphens.
l. Consult the Chicago Manual for proper capitalization (for example, Bible and Scripture are capitalized, but biblical and scriptural are not).
On formal matters, CSR follows traditional humanities style as set forth in the Chicago Manual of Style. If a manuscript, otherwise acceptable, needs considerable correction to make it conformable to the style manual (e.g., in footnotes), the editor may return the manuscript to the author for correction.
Within the above limits, and the more general canons of logic and language observed by all scholarly publications, the editors try not to deprive an author of his or her distinctive idiom. However, CSR follows an editorial policy of inclusive language with regard to references to humans. In particular, articles and book reviews should be written to acknowledge and affirm both genders. The editors reserve the right to revise wording which fails to meet this criterion.
Referees for Volume XL
The Christian Scholar’s Review expresses its appreciation to the following persons who served as referees for submitted manuscripts during the year ending March 31, 2011. (Any omissions will be corrected if brought to the editor’s attention.) Because of the wide range of subjects covered by CSR, we are heavily dependent on the judgment and advice of our referees. Their recommendations have a significant influence on our selection of papers for publication, but perhaps their most important contribution lies in the constructive guidance they give to our authors; many an article has been greatly improved as a result of a referee’s suggestions. All this work—sometimes hours on a single manuscript—is done for the love of Christian scholarship, with no expectation of material reward. Our thanks, then, to those who contribute so much to making this journal possible:
Vince Bacote, Wheaton College
Adam Barkman, Redeemer University College, Ontario
Thomas Becknell, Bethel University
Bruce Benson, Wheaton College
John Bloom, Biola University
Steve Bouma-Prediger, Hope College
Susan Brooks, Bethel University
Mark Bruce, Bethel University
Craig Carter, Tyndale Seminary, Ontario
Jay Case, Malone University
Brian Cooper, Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary, British Columbia
Chris Cuthill, Redeemer University College, Ontario
Edward Davis, Messiah College
Chris deGroot, Religion, Calvin College
Craig Detweiler, Pepperdine University
David Downing, Elizabethtown College
John Drake, University of Georgia
Bruce L. Edwards, Bowling Green State University
Barrett Fisher, Bethel University
Richard Follett, Covenant College
J. Glenn Freisen, independent scholar
Chris Gehrz, Bethel University
Perry Glanzer, Baylor University
Thomas Graves, psychology private practice
Hans Halvorson, Princeton University
Stacey Hunter Hecht, Bethel University
Joey Horstman, Bethel University
Denise Isom, California Polytechnic, San Luis Obispo
Rhonda Jacobsen, Messiah College
Thomas Kidd, Baylor University
Doug Koopman, Political Science, Calvin College
Russ Kosits, Redeemer University College, Ontario
Michael Kugler, Northwestern College (IA)D.
Stephen Long, Marquette University
Heather Looy, Kings University College
Peter Meilaender, Houghton College
Chad Meister, Bethel College
Teri Merrick, Azusa Pacific University
Richard Middleton, Roberts Wesleyan College
Cristian Mihut, Bethel College
Paul Moes, Calvin College
Mark Morelli, Loyola Marymount University
Tim Morris, Covenant College
Mark Mulder, Calvin College
Katherine Nevins, Bethel University
Wayne Norman, Simpson University
Jim Olthuis, Institute for Christian Studies, retired
Carrie Peffley, Bethel University
Tim Perry, Providence Theological Seminary, Manitoba
Brian Pitts, University of Notre Dame
Jay Rasmussen, Bethel University
Mark Rhoads, Bethel University
Daniel Ritchie, Bethel University
Sara Rosenquist, psychology private practice
Samuel Seaman, Pepperdine University
Stephen Self, Bethel University
Sara Shady, Bethel University
Brad Shaw, Greenville College
Gary Scott Smith, Grove City College
R. J. Snell, Eastern University
Ken Stewart, Covenant College
Ross Stewart, Seattle Pacific University
Oliver Trimiew, Covenant College Van Weigel, independent scholar
Henry Williams, physician
Amos Yong, Regent Seminary
Cite this article
Footnotes
- This number is totally fictitious, shared in jest to overstate the preponderance of quotes from Mark Noll’s works (with Mark in the audience).
- The Vatican Embassy, Sagamore Institute, and Baylor events were in conjunction with the Green Collection and The Green Scholar’s Initiative. See http://www.explorepassages.com and http://www.greenscholarsinitiative.com.
- See Elizabeth Kiss and J. Peter Euben, editors, Debating Moral Education: Rethinking the Role of the Modern University (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010) and Jerry Pattengale, “What are Universities for? The Tested Terrain of Moral Education,” Books & Culture (Summer 2010).
