The Blessed Inescapability of Service Post

Sometimes students’ reasons for becoming entrepreneurs go beyond the desire for lifestyle freedom. Some young people bristle at the idea of having someone in authority over them. More than autonomy, they want power and immunity from the demands of others, and they imagine being their own boss as equivalent to achieving it. They imagine organizing a business in which they “call the shots” while others “wash the pots”; a business that serves them.  These would-be entrepreneurs evidence a misunderstanding of business. Serving the needs of clients, fellow employees, or others is the very nature of value creation in business. Some may prefer to serve indirectly through an organizational structure while others may prefer to serve more immediately by starting their own business.

Why Are Christian Campus Conversations about Alcohol So Anemic? Part I: The Evidence Post

Survey Q: How does the Christian faith inform your message about alcohol?Participant: “We don’t really have a message about alcohol, aside from ‘don’t do it’.” When I worked in public policy, I once spoke at a governor’s conference in North Dakota. After my talk, I struck up a conversation with the Lt. Governor. She made…

Liberation From and For: The Vocation of the Educated Person Post

In light of increasing challenges and pressures in higher education, small liberal arts colleges struggle to maintain their identity and sense of institutional vocation. In too many instances—and stemming from both external attack and internal loss of purpose—liberal arts institutions sometimes seem to have forgotten what it means to offer a broad-based, interdisciplinary, and transformative…

Which Sectors of Christian Higher Education Actually Grew During the COVID Years? Post

In a recent blog post, I addressed the sloppy, alarmist reporting about the state of Christian higher education in the United States. The actual trajectory of religious higher education between 2010 and 2019 involved only minuscule decline (-0.1%) and that decline was much less than the -4% enrollment decline among secular universities. In other words,…

Interdisciplinary Research as a Sharing of Gifts, Part 2 Post

In the first essay in this series, we presented the notion that within interdisciplinary work “we each represent our own discipline, but we are all working for the same Kingdom.” This second essay in this three-part series is presented from the disciplines of education and behavior analysis. The unique gift of the education department is…

Fifty Flavors of Jesus Post

A few days after Easter, the Wall Street Journal published a story titled “Our Many Jesuses.” The blurb below the headline read: “At a time of shrinking church membership, Jesus remains a uniquely powerful and popular figure in American culture. The great divide is over what he stands for.” Next to the headline were Warhol-esque…

Purgatory: What to Make of a Gifted Athlete? Three Parables (Part 2) Post

In yesterday’s post, I maintained that our talents are, just like our very lives, gifts from God. Recognizing that our lives and talents are gifts has three important implications for athletes: gifts must be cultivated, gifts are temporary, and gifts must be used well. These facts—regarding the nature and purpose of athletic gifts—are not often…

A Typology of Christian Discipleship Methods, Part 2 Post

What are the disciple-making options for churches, schools, and others committed to facilitating the spiritual growth process? Part 1 of this series offered five methods from throughout church history. Here in Part 2, I share four more historical methods, followed by a suggestion for integrating these time-honored approaches into a comprehensive discipleship model that is…

Attention and Adoration: An Advent Reflection Post

Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. –Simon Weil We have an attention problem. It’s easy to blame modern media technologies. Many have done so, and I regularly join their lament. The field of media ecology is ripe with insights about technology’s effects on our ability to purposefully attend to…

Not Fundamentalist, not Conservative, and not Liberal: The Fundamentals and the Mainstream of American Evangelicalism Post

Everyone knows that American Protestantism generally divided into fundamentalist and liberal camps in the 1920s. And many people know that fundamentalism derives from The Fundamentals, early-twentieth-century tracts that reduced the rich doctrinal heritage of Christianity down to five points of do-or-die orthodoxy. Neither of these putative facts, however, is true. This paper shows that The…

Star Shake, Glass Break, All to the Good Post

In the mythology of modern art, there are a few old chestnuts that get repeated again and again. There is the time Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear and then bore witness through confessional portraiture. There is the time Pablo Picasso unveiled his first masterpiece, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, and declared it an “exorcism.” (For…

Higher Education’s Neglect of Moral Expertise Post

“Most social situations are not moral, because there is no conflict between the role-taking expectations of one person and another.”—Lawrence Kohlberg As mentioned in yesterday’s post, early in the history of higher education in America, one finds that American moral philosophers and educators gave up relying upon a functional view of a person’s full humanity…

Helping GenZ Do Science: Cultivating the Written Word Post

“This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Write in a book all the words I have spoken to you.’” – Jeremiah 30:2 (NIV) I remember as a college freshman seeing a cartoon taped on the door of one of the physics labs in Cornelia Hall at Iona College. It showed a student…

Guest Post – What’s in a Name? Post

My husband and I are called by nicknames from our middle names. Needless to say, this can make for some confusing, if not frustrating, moments when legal documents are involved to prove that this is indeed the real me. However, the upside is I immediately know if it’s a salesperson on the phone if they…

Interview: The Church, the Christian Academy, and the Public Square Post

Russell Moore is one of the leading Christian voices in the public square today. At the time of this interview, Moore was serving as the President of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, which is the moral and public policy agency of the Southern Baptist Convention. Shortly after this interview, he resigned his position and…

Ellul on New Urbanism Post

In this paper, Jacques Ellul’s theory of “technique” and his theology of the city are framed into a critique of New Urbanism. Against Modernism’s view of the city as a “machine for living in,” New Urbanism harks back to the ambiance of old New England towns. But far from assuring the sense of community it…

Gabriel’s Hello Post

Author’s Note: By the kind permission of both journals’ editors, a version of this piece with the title “Gabriel’s Word to Woman” is also being published today by Church Life Journal. I am especially grateful for this gesture of Christian solidarity on the Feast of the Annunciation, 2022, the day on which Pope Francis is…

Mark A. Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Updated Edition) Post

With great appreciation to Wheaton College and its Faith and Learning Program, Christian Scholar’s Review is pleased to share Tuesday’s (3/15) panel discussion with Mark A. Noll concerning the updated edition of The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind.  The discussion, titled “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind in a Social Media Age,” included panelists Theon…

Learning in a Time of (Cultural) War: Indoctrination in Focus on the Family’s The Truth Project Post

Randal Rauser argues that Focus on the Family’s popular lay-worldview curriculum entitled The Truth Project™fails to provide a true Christian worldview education, and instead evinces the marks of indoctrination. He begins with the core problem that that the curriculum encourages simplistic binary categories which distort the issues and inhibit the student from developing skills of…