Book Review: George Yancey, Beyond Racial Division: A Unifying Alternative to Colorblindness and Antiracism. IVP, 2022. Does George Yancey have any friends? His new book Beyond Racial Division rejects dominant models for racial engagement, an unpopular approach that clears space for a third way. In challenging colorblindness, the perspective probably held among most evangelicals, he…
While browsing through some past Faith Animating Learning blog articles, I came across a helpful piece by Louis Markos on “Teaching in a Post-COVID world.” Part of the piece offers cautions regarding the effects of social media consumption on teaching: Although the algorithms are generally driven by a consumerist agenda that privileges advertising over politics,…
When the Moravian bishop and education reformer John Amos Comenius died in 1670, he was just a few chapters short of completing his 7-volume General Consultation on the Reform of Human Affairs (De rerum humanarum emendatione consultatio catholica). This ambitious work ranged across a vast array of topics including philosophy, theology, linguistics, education, politics, and…
Time will tell whether the trust we inherited is one we stewarded well in the name of Christian scholarship. For now, we will pause, celebrate 50 years of efforts made by countless individuals, and then prayerfully develop a strategic plan designed to guide CSR for years to come.
When neighborhoods gentrify, residents can be physically displaced as well as psychologically displaced. This psychological displacement can occur even if the resident is not physically displaced. In this article, Keith E. Starkenburg and Mackenzi Huyser explore the significant impact that neighborhood changes have on one’s attachment to place as expressed through the concept of Christian…
Black Lives Matter! Defund the Police! We often get immersed in the issue and forget the human aspect. These photos were created in response to the murders of African men, due to police violence. The mothers in Henry’s series of photos have not lost their sons but understand that their son could be next. Now,…
Wayne Forte was born in Manila, Philippines in 1950, and studied at the University of California at Santa Barbara and Irvine. Wayne has been a member of CIVA (Christians in the Visual Arts) for twenty-five years and participated in the Florence Portfolio Project in 1993. His works have been exhibited nationally and internationally. © 2010,…
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…
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…
“So, [polite pause] what do you actually do?” is a very common follow-up question when someone learns that I am a provost. The question occurs frequently enough that I try to find new ways to answer it. For students, I usually quip, “I am a big boss, but not the final boss.” I am thankful…
The love of wisdom needs the wisdom of love. Let me say what this means and why it matters. I begin with a poem by Miriam Pederson titled “Hold Your Horses.”[1] Lasso truthlike a run-away steerand you will find its veinsrunning cold. Approach it like a loverwith a ribbon for her hairand truth, in time,will…
Reviewed by Michael Lessard-Clouston, Applied Linguistics and TESOL, Biola University Christians are known as people who are often concerned about language – what we and others read and write, say and hear. Yet until recently scant scholarship on Christian perspectives concerning language existed. Into this void step Michael Pasquale University) and Nathan Bierma (Calvin Institute…
Co-authors David Lyle Jeffrey and Gregory Maillet set out in their book Christianity and Literature: Philosophical Foundations and Critical Practice with a relatively modest purpose, envisioning their task “as that of suggesting ways that a Christian worldview can provide a pertinent and fruitful approach to literary study as an academic discipline” (27). They wish to…
In broad terms, hospitality can be defined as “the friendly reception and treatment of guests or strangers” or “the quality or disposition of receiving and treating guests and strangers in a warm, friendly, generous way.” The words hospitality and hospital are both derived from the Latin hospes, signifying a guest, stranger, or foreigner—describing the connection between…
If I could tell my college-aged self to read just one book, it would be The Lonely Man of Faith by Joseph B. Soloveitchik. I’ve read it three times since I discovered it in 2012, and I wish I’d found it earlier. When I was an undergraduate at the University of Florida, I wouldn’t have…
“The simple believes everything, but the prudent gives thought to his steps.” – Proverbs 14:15 ESV “Open your mouth for the mute, for the rights of all who are destitute. Open your mouth, judge righteously, defend the rights of the poor and needy.” – Proverbs 31:8-9 ESV In one of the laboratory classes I teach,…
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…
When the early Church began building its own educational tradition, it faced the challenge of how developing this new Christian revelation should interact with Greek and Roman thinking. They had to ask, as the early Christian thinker Tertullian did, “What indeed does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?” Various Church Fathers gave three types of…
One of the clearest conclusions we can take away from the 2020 election season is that political and ideological polarization has continued to be one of the most powerful forces in our social life. In recent days, I have seen a variety of calls for us to come together as a people, or as a…
Last year I wrote about the possibility that Christians face religious discrimination in the United States. We are moving into a post-Christian society and this is reflected in increased expressions of anti-Christian bigotry. My research has confirmed that those with this bigotry are more likely to be white, male, wealthy, and well-educated. So, it is very well connected and…
