When I was in high school, the most common use of the word vocation was in reference to the kids who left school right after lunch and headed out to a large, warehouse-like building near the airport. For those of us who stayed at school the rest of the day, this was known as the…
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…
Between 1928 and 1930, Hugh Hartshorne and Mark May published a series of famous studies about character that would set back the study of virtue for over a half-century. Based on their studies Hartshorne and May concluded there was no such thing as stable character traits in people. The major reason for this conclusion pertained…
Over the past two decades, the Faith & Work movement has highlighted the potential impact of Christians in business when they serve and work with purpose. To achieve this, a framework for Biblical business practice is needed. This paper integrates Biblical foundations with business research to create a wisdom-based framework for impactful business strategy. By…
This post will not be about me, but I think I owe my readers some context involving a bit of autobiography to make sense of what follows. I am a theologian who teaches in the math and computer science department of a Christian, liberal arts university (utilizing an MS in Computer Science). This unusual relationship…
The “integration of faith and learning” has become a touchstone of many Evangelical Protestant higher education institutions in recent decades. Martin Spence argues that modern Evangelical scholars and teachers have intellectual forbears who long ago raised similar questions about the relationship between faith and learning. The author introduces one such individual, the nineteenth-century British Baptist…
Susan VanZanten is the Assistant Vice President for Mission and Spiritual Life and Consulting Dean for Christ College, the Honors College at Valparaiso University. She will be retiring in 2022. She has published many essays and books, including Joining the Mission: A Guide for (Mainly) New Faculty Members (Eerdmans, 2011). I have spent over 45…
Almost forty years ago Alvin Plantinga’s memorable “Advice to Christian Philosophers” set out a three-fold challenge to encourage members of his own academic tribe, but also “Christian intellectuals generally.” First, “to display . . . more independence of the rest of the philosophical world”; second, to “display more integrity in the sense of integral wholeness”;…
Todd C. Ream is Professor of Higher Education at Taylor University, a research fellow with Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion, and the co-author (along with Perry L. Glanzer) most recently of The Idea of a Christian College: A Reexamination for Today’s University (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2013). The university has collapsed into an entity…
Reviewed by Kelly M. Kapic, Theological Studies, Covenant College How should one react to the following claims? “Jesus was an ingrate” (68); or “‘ingratitude’ is one of Christianity’s great contributions to Western civilization, precisely the contribution Christianity made to the formation of modernity” (225). Such lines, scattered through this volume, may strike the reader as…
I didn’t think I’d want to write about it, but it has came up in my social media again and again. Was it authentic? Was it theologically sound? Was it good for the church? These questions were quickly followed by those saying, “Leave it alone!” “What’s the harm?” and “Who are you to judge?” I’ve…
Although it is empirically established that traditional religion enhances fertility, how it increases childbearing is not clear. This paper is an exploratory qualitative study investigating how religion influences decisions about intended fertility and family size. Most specifically, Michael Emerson and George Yancey ask how, if at all, do the religious understand children and family differently….
In the past two decades the evangelical academy has devoted a good deal of attention to the “Christian scholar” and “Christian scholarship.” While these discussions have born considerable fruit, they lack the scope to cast a vision for Christian higher education in general. Jim Halverson argues that the Christian academy needs to articulate a vision…
Being an athlete is often depicted as being interchangeable with striving for glory. Indeed the pinnacle of achievement in sports is almost always depicted as receiving public acclaim and recognition. The Olympics even mythologize this fact by representing spatially what is implied figuratively by placing the top athlete in each field atop a podium above…
Stanley Hauerwas explores the ways in which the fear of death, or more generally the fear of human limitation, shapes the discourse in medical ethics insofar as often the underlying presumption is that medicine’s ultimate aim is to put an end to human limitation – even death. Drawing on the work of Paul Ramsey, Hauerwas…
For well over twenty years, Christian scholars and educators of various disciplines have been engaged in an examination of the nature of Christian and secular higher education. Much of that reflection with regard to the North American context in particular has turned on one of two types of examinations. The first type is comprised of a…
Since I was a child, music has been an integral part of my development. In fact, I find it difficult to recall times in my life when music was not omnipresent—from singing in my preschool church choir to contributing my soprano voice to what is now the Houston Boychoir (that is, until being dismissed when…
In the post-9/11 era, numerous scholars and commentators attempted to explain and theorize the relationship between religion and violence. One of the most controversial arguments that was yet again reiterated and heatedly discussed after the 9/11 events was Samuel Huntington’s “the Clash of Civilizations” thesis (1993, 1996). In his 1993 Foreign Affairs piece, Huntington argues…
Author’s Note: This is a slightly revised version of the Presidential Address delivered to the Classical Association of the Middle West and South, Southern Section, in November 2004. At that time, the iPhone was but a gleam in Steve Jobs’s eye. As we theorize about the many ills facing our nation’s youth (and their possible…
In an echo of Michael Emerson and Christian Smith’s study of evangelicals and the racialized society (detailed vividly in Divided by Faith), Mark T. Mulder and James K. A. Smith attempt to trace the history and literature concerning evangelicals and their relationship to the city. While there exists an interesting literature about general urban antipathy…
