Mackenzi Huyser serves as Executive Director of Chicago Semester. What is the Cost of Segregation in Chicago? This question was explored in a March 2017 report released by the Urban Institute in partnership with the Metropolitan Planning Council. One of the three important findings in this research was that “Chicago continues to struggle as a…
As we near the twenty-fifth anniversary of Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, those who wish to make sense of its legacy confront a rather curious puzzle. If the book aimed to energize a generation of evangelicals to establish themselves in elite universities, to produce credible, meaningful scholarship, and to leave a record…
And there is a second commandment, which seems to me even more incomprehensible and arouses even stronger opposition in me. It is: “Love thine enemies.” Sigmund Freud “…while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son…” Romans 5:10b, NIV James Martin tells the story of a priest who asked his…
Story 1: Several years ago, my wife and I were one of the first people at a site of a horrific accident where a young child had died. Without going into the gruesome details, this accident involved a pad-mounted transformer located in a residential area. Story 2: When my youngest daughter was a toddler, she…
Reviewed by Dave Klanderman, Mathematics and Statistics, Calvin University “For such as time as this.” This phrase serves as part of a final justification offered by Mordecai in his plea to Esther to use her role as Queen to help to save the Hebrews from Haman’s plot to destroy them (Esther 4:12-14ff). In a similar…
Modern discussion of the liberal arts has emphasized the development of the individual critical thinker and not the art of thinking socially. Rick Kennedy summarizes the four-step craft of social thinking that was long taught in the pre-modern tradition of liberal arts. This intellectual craft was not specifically named by the ancients but is evident…
Reviewed by Matthew Emile Vaughan, (Ph.D. Student) Religion and Education, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York After nearly two centuries of critical inquiry, the tensions between varying readings of Genesis 1-3 still engender highly charged debate. The camps tend to be obvious. Many interpreters insist on a literal reading, arguing for the…
With the revamp of the Christian Scholar’s Review website last year, it is easy to search our archives for authors, articles, book reviews, and essays from the paper edition of the journal dating back to 2012. We are also posting current articles on our homepage for easy access. As the editor of our print journal,…
As many of us return to physical campuses this fall, mostly without masks, we are following the advice of classic sociologists: humans need proximity. It’s worth the trouble to regain this aspect of pre-pandemic life. As for me, I anticipate seeing students again with joy, but being on campus also brings the strong possibility of…
Editor’s note: Due to an internal error, this post was not distributed this past Thursday when it originally posted. As a result, we are distributing it today. Thanks, PLG The idea of the public intellectual, popularly introduced in the mid-twentieth century, has flourished over the past decade. A public intellectual is an expert, “often a…
“And this is explained by collectivism…” I cringe inside every time it occurs. During a presentation or classroom discussion, a student will articulate a cultural difference and follow up with an explanation that, with a certain degree of finality, labels the observed difference as a result of collectivistic or individualistic (C-I) cultures. But the elaboration…
Sidarta Ribeiro, in The Oracle of Night: The History and Science of Dreams, has written a book that artfully blends multiple disciplines of human experience, from sociology to biochemistry, in pursuit of its fundamental question: Why do we dream? Ribeiro argues against the scientific “default” interpretation that dreams are random firings of neurons without meaning….
On the Christianity Today podcast “The Rise & Fall of Mars Hill” disgraced former pastor Mark Driscoll is recorded giving this commentary on the passage in Revelation 19:11ff: He gets a snapshot, the curtain is pulled back, and, behold, a white horse – I love this! – How many of you grew up watching Westerns?…
The question of how life began strikes at the heart of the intersection of philosophy and science. Every Life is on Fire: How Thermodynamics Explains the Origins of Living Things presents a complete overview of England’s theoretical model of dissipative adaptation and how it relates to the origin of life. Unlike other books written on the…
In March of 2020, famed daredevil Nik Wallenda completed the astonishing feat of walking on a tightrope stretched out across an active Volcano crater in Nicaragua. He stood roughly 2,100 feet above volcanic magma, dawning goggles, a balance beam, and a respirator to protect him from fumes. I wondered what went through his head as…
The most-read article in The New York Times in 2021 was not about COVID, not about January 6th, not about the trial of Derek Chauvin, nor about NASA’s helicopter, Ingenuity, flying above the surface of Mars. It was by social psychologist Adam Grant who wrote back in April about languishing, a state of being that…
My prolific bookseller friend has insisted that Beyond Homelessness is one of the most important books of 2008. I find it hard to disagree. Steven Bouma-Prediger and Brian J. Walsh assert that “Christian faith is a faith that is always placed. Placed in a good creation. Placed in time. An incarnational faith” (xii). Antithetical to…
Kevin S. Reimer argues that hope contributes to the development of maturity in moral identity. The context for this discussion is a research project on compassionate love in L’Arche communities. Best known through the writings of Jean Vanier and Henri Nouwen, L’Arche is a network of Christian homes for disabled individuals and their caregiver assistants….
My interest in relating Christian faith to the practice of librarianship emerged about 25 years ago when I was pursuing my master’s degree in library science. I first explored such integration in a class paper that I entitled “The Role of Christian Academic Libraries: Promoting the Theistic Worldview.” My professor returned my paper with various…
Some years ago, I read back-to-back autobiographies of two retired tennis players who had achieved excellence during their lives: Andre Agassi and Pete Sampras. There is little doubt that both underwent exacting forms of practice with coaches that built incredible physical and mental habits. Yet, as Andre Agassi said in his autobiography, “We could not…
