How can evangelical communities work together amidst differences to cast a vision for gospel witness? This article focuses on the origins, process, and legacies of the 1973 Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern, with reflections on its challenges to Christian higher education today. The process of crafting this document and its resulting institutional and sociocultural…
Each of the three authors of the books reviewed in this essay seems to have had a moment when he realized that imparting knowledge and skills, however important, is an insufficient goal of education. For Quentin Schultze, it was when one student dumped his notes and textbook (written by Schultze himself!) into a trash can…
I am the elephant in the room. Everywhere I go, people are unintentionally drawn to me. Or rather, people are drawn to a part of me. You see, I was born without my right forearm and hand due to Amniotic Band Syndrome (ABS). I used to wear a prosthetic arm, but due to some physical…
“‘God’s Image cut, or carved in Ebony,’ was a phrase first used, we believe by the English Church Historian, [Thomas] Fuller [in 1642]…and assuredly this phrase is among the most striking of the graphic sentences which he stamped so deeply on the republic of letters. There it stands, this beautiful and appropriate piece of imagery,…
Perry Glanzer begins his ambitious and stimulating book with a story that is both uncannily prescient and deeply disturbing. He tells us that the impetus for his work dates from the 1990s when he spent an extended period of time in Russia and Ukraine studying post-communist moral education. Again and again in Russia, teachers confessed,…
Beloved, let us be loving one another. Because the love is from God! And everyone loving has been born from God, and knows God. 1 John 4:7 DLNT After writing a post for my blog on the importance of savoring the season of Christmas for worshipping our Savior, I realized the need to do the…
Perry Glanzer begins his ambitious and stimulating book with a story that is both uncannily prescient and deeply disturbing. He tells us that the impetus for his work dates from the 1990s when he spent an extended period of time in Russia and Ukraine studying post-communist moral education. Again and again in Russia, teachers confessed,…
“Suffering doesn’t automatically or naturally lead to [spiritual] growth or good outcomes. It must be handled properly.” – Tim Keller “Our fruitfulness comes out of our vulnerability and not just out of our power. It comes out of our powerlessness.” – Henri Nouwen “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the…
“Exvangelicalism” is a relatively new term for a much older phenomenon: those who’ve been raised as evangelicals coming to realize that they no longer identify as such, and intentionally reckoning with the continuing impact of that tradition in their lives. Philosophers have not had much to say about this phenomenon – until now. The Evangelical Philosophical Society sponsored the panel “Exvangelicalism and Evangelical Philosophy”…
“Exvangelicalism” is a relatively new term for a much older phenomenon: those who’ve been raised as evangelicals coming to realize that they no longer identify as such, and intentionally reckoning with the continuing impact of that tradition in their lives. Philosophers have not had much to say about this phenomenon – until now. The Evangelical Philosophical Society sponsored the panel “Exvangelicalism and Evangelical Philosophy”…
To what extent can popular culture be understood as a collection of religions? Using a biblically informed appropriation of Paul Ricoeur’s theory of narrative as a threefold mimesis as his conceptual grid, Theodore A. Turnau explores how popular cultural texts can function as alternative religions. He focuses on two case studies: a group of romance…
While commending the current primary means for Christian scholars to engage members of the larger academy through publications and conference presentations, Harold Heie proposes the increased use of dialogic discourse that starts with Christian scholars seeking to develop personal relationships of mutual trust with other scholars. He provides a number of examples where this interpersonal…
In July 2021, Tim Muehlhoff and Rick Langer had a lengthy conversation with Theon Hill, a communications scholar whose research delves into the interface between the Black community and white evangelicalism, writing on the relationship between rhetoric and social change—particularly as related to race, culture, and American politics. He has written on the topic of…
“Beyond the Mind” by Todd C. Ream Taylor University recently began a new campaign with the motto of “Beyond the Mind.” Billboards brandished these words along with images of students. Atfirst glance I must admit I was somewhat perplexed by this effort. Passing one of these billboards on Interstate 69 in northeastern Indiana I thought,…
America is a very moralistic country, with entire cable channels devoted to gossiping about moral lapses and crime. Our colleges and universities, by contrast, have a reputation as value-free zones, with professors who refine their skepticism about value judgments and students who are indulged in whatever behaviors they choose. This is how we train our…
In this essay Heidi Oberholtzer Lee argues that we need to teach and model in our classrooms the importance of reading with humility. This serves as a corrective to the promotion of reading strategies that primarily emphasize negativity and scorn, strategies that have been popularized by misapplications of Paul Ricoeur ’s “hermeneutic of suspicion.” More…
Higher education institutions are encountering an unprecedented confluence of short- and long-term challenges. Despite the turbulent context, institutionally and individually we must perpetually work to sustain our liminal essence, while refusing to be defined by excesses. Because on these campuses, students are transformed into “whole and holy persons,” and equipped to engage in “God’s work…
Since I earned my doctoral degree in communication studies in the 1970s, scholarship addressing the intersection of religion and communication has become a booming enterprise.More recently, researchers have started examining the rise of “new” digital media which enable religious groups to circumvent the mainstream and religious mass media gatekeepers at television and radio networks and…
From the beginning of time, there were whispers. There was rumor even at the Fall, at the cracking of the world, when the face of God was hidden and the great rifting began. But the rifting was an unfolding – a re-creation by means grinding and strenuous. A seer would later write, “The whole creation…
Like a city whose walls are broken through is a person who lacks self-control.Prov. 25:28 (NIV) That self-control is a fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:23) required of both men and women is not debated in Christian circles (see also 2 Peter 1:6). Titus 2 specifically emphasizes the need to teach self-control to older men (v….
