Free to be Muslim-Americans: Community, Gender, and Identity in Once in a Promised Land, The Taqwacores, and The Girl in the Tangerine Scarf Post

When we hear that local Muslims have perpetrated terrorist attacks, many Americans worry whether the “strangers in our midst” will assimilate and become Muslim-Americans. Barbara J. Hampton argues that an examination of the themes of community, gender, and identity in three American novels written by Muslims can relieve the worst of our anxieties. The characters…

Superstitions in Sport: A Brief Theological and Sporting Perspective Post

{The following excerpt comes from Matt Hoven, J.J. Carney, and Max Engel, On the Eighth Day: A Catholic Theology of Sport (Cascade/Wipf & Stock: Eugene, OR, 2022), 115-7. Used with permission from Wipf and Stock Publishers. Available for purchase at wipfandstock.com, Amazon.com, and elsewhere}. The vast majority of elite athletes practice superstitions—despite the fact that…

Advice to Christian Historians Post

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”;…

Hourglass: For the New Year Post

As we celebrate the New Year, we commemorate the passage of the old. In the mass media, this comes in the form of top ten lists and “in memoriam” montages. In folk imagery, it is symbolized by Father Time with his sickle. (He even appears in Rudolph’s Shiny New Year.) Though often comical in recent…

Fall Plans and the Delta Variant Post

Two weeks ago, a meme circulated with two pictures, labeled “My Fall Plans” and “The Delta Variant.” Usually the former image was cheerful and the latter considerably more dark. I saw most of these posted by my professor friends, asking a very good question: How can professors be expected to write a syllabus in this…

The Only Way to Win: The Enduring Problem of Nuclear Deterrence Post

In this essay Daniel R. Allen reviews nuclear deterrence, the most crucial theoretic construct for nuclear weapons policy. A wide range of positions exists with respect to belief in the deterrent utility of nuclear weapons. The positions of deterrence optimists rely entirely on a presumption that human rationality undercuts the motive for nuclear weapon use….

The Parachurch Down Under: A Case Study Post

A Scottish clergyman once described Australia as the “most godless place under heaven.” Although his comment was ill-informed, as a provocative statement it clues us in to something of a popular sentiment regarding the religiosity of Australia. Yet contrary to popular impression, it can be forcefully argued that Christianity in general, and evangelicalism in particular,…

A Question of Power: A Political Scientist Responds to AIDS in Africa Post

In this article, Amy S. Patterson investigates how political power shapes the AIDS pandemic in Africa. Because Christians in the West often lack knowledge about how political power increases vulnerability to HIV infection and affects policy responses to the disease, the work analyzes the uneven impact of HIV/AIDS on countries, communities, and population groups. It…

Woke Sociology, Woke Jesus Post

In January, the Florida Board of Governors removed Principles of Sociology as a general education core course option in all twelve Florida public universities. The verdict came a week after the Florida State Board of Education had already unanimously voted to remove sociology as a core course offering in all twenty-eight Florida public colleges. As…

Affluence Agonistes —A Review Essay Post

Jordan J. Ballor is a research fellow at the Acton Institute and serves as executive editor of the Journal of Markets & Morality. He is also associate director of the Junius Institute for Digital Reformation Research at Calvin Theological Seminary. “We have been so buffeted by international hatred, so discomfited by an almost masochistic domestic…

Unchaining Weber’s Iron Cage: A Look at What Managers Can Do Post

Ever since Max Weber first named the iron cage over a century ago, people have been interested in unchaining it. Christians may have a particular interest in Weber’s analysis because it points to the influence of religious values both in supporting initially, and then potentially liberating humankind from, the iron cage. Bruno Dyck, Mitchell J….

Petitions Against Professors, Part 1: Prosecution and Defense Post

You might have heard that organic chemistry professor Maitland Jones Jr. is no longer teaching at NYU. The news went global when Jones had his one-year contract taken away, not because of a crime or scandal, but because of a student petition against the way he taught his course. This news surprised me. I had…

Gender Differences at Christian and Secular Colleges Post

What affects students’ views more, their gender or the type of college they attend (that is, Christian or secular)? Thomas Knecht and Emily Ecklund argue that women at Christian colleges generally have more in common with women at secular colleges than they do with men at their own schools. Nevertheless, students at Christian colleges part…

The Taylor Paper: God and Vocation in Christian Higher Education Post

Using a student assignment on the philosopher Charles Taylor as a case study, this essay argues that teaching about vocation and calling can help students see that a call from God need not be entirely nebulous, emotional, and individualistic in nature. Rather, although there are important nebulous and emotional aspects to vocation, the concept might…

Money or Business? A Case Study of Christian Virtue Ethics in Corporate Work Post

Business defines itself increasingly as the pursuit of money, but this move into the “iron cage” signals a process of abstraction away from goods internal to business. Scott Waalkes argues that virtues implicit in the Incarnation counter problems in this move by encouraging virtuous Christian business people to work toward the Kingdom of God through…

Cast Your Nets to the Right Side: Faith, Virtue, and the Morality of Food Choices Post

In this paper, I examine the relationship between evangelical Christian faith and the morality of food choices. I explore the extent to which non-human animals deserve moral consideration. I outline three models of moral status that philosophers have debated for the past four decades: (a) the viewpoint that animals lack any moral status and therefore…

American Christianity and the New Eugenics: Consumerism, Human Genetics, and the Challenge to Christian Personhood Post

American Christianity’s participation in the twentieth-century movement commonly termed the “old eugenics” helped enable eugenic policies that contributed to human rights abuses and social divisions. While churches have attempted to restore their reputations from the stain of that period, what some are calling the “new” or “consumer” eugenics has emerged a century later with markedly…

Building a Better Legal Education Post

“Build to-day, then, strong and sure, With a firm and ample base; And ascending and secure Shall to-morrow find its place.” -H.W. Longfellow- Since the ostensible end of the COVID pandemic, and with the return of students to in-person classes, America has seen an interesting shift on law school campuses. Observers note a rising wave of activist students that the National Jurist called “the protest generation.” Examples abound, including the infamous cancelation…