Guy Stroumsa’s new book is not so much about religion, or even the study of religion, as it is about the history of the comparative study of religion since the Enlightenment. More specifically, Stroumsa bases his research on the primary sources of the published works of the missionaries and scholars who were involved firsthand with…
I have an image pinned to the noticeboard by my desk that resulted from a moment of incompetence but seemed worth keeping in view. It was generated while working on data during a recent research project. With a team of colleagues (Steve McMullen, Kara Sevensma, and Marj Terpstra), I was investigating the impact of technological…
I’ve been thinking about burdens again. Often my own, I must confess, but also the kind that I place on others’ shoulders. The question about whether I lift a finger to carry them myself. The times when the others are my students. Creating burdens for students, sometimes difficult ones, is part of the faculty’s role….
“Without stories there is nothing. Stories are the world’s memory. The past is erased without stories.” ― Chaim Potok, Old Men At Midnight One Sunday after church, my daughter and our very hip lead pastor began talking about Harry Potter. With the names “Tonks and Lupin,” the differences in education, experience, gender, age, fashion, and…
For months now, the governors of Texas, Arizona, and Florida have been bussing immigrants east and north, depositing them at Union Station in Washington, D.C. and also in New York City and Chicago. These actions raise questions about scapegoating, heaping political acrimony on the backs of migrants and the methods of transporting them out of…
In the summer of 2020 Falls City Press released a collection of essays by David S. Guthrie: Dreaming Dreams for Christian Higher Education (for a 20% discount enter “CSR”). Guthrie is Teaching Professor of Education in the Department of Education Policy Studies at Penn State University, where he has taught since 2014. He is also a…
The publisher and editors of the Christian Scholar’s Review are pleased to announce the recipient of its annual award for best article. The winner of the Charles J. Miller Christian Scholar’s Award for volume 43 is Kevin D. Miller, professor of Communication, Huntington University, Huntington, Indiana. His article, “Reframing the Faith-Learning Relationship: Bonhoeffer and an…
I recently reviewed John Bernbaum’s fantastic new book, Opening the Red Door The Inside Story of Russia’s First Christian Liberal Arts University for The Review of Faith and International Affairs. After reading the book, I came to the conclusion that John Bernbaum should be celebrated as one of the great Christian creators. The book documents two decades of John’s work…
There’s been an ongoing, race-to-the-bottom-like debate about what actually constitutes the “last acceptable prejudice” in mainstream culture. Among a list of contenders, I want to focus on one that has been suggested elsewhere—a bias toward rural America and rural Americans. I highlight this bias, not because I have particular empirical support for it, although much…
Shame and guilt are important concepts within Christian theology. In much of the literature, however, these two concepts are lumped together, offering little if any distinction between them. By contrast, evidence-based psychological research on the topics of shame and guilt has flourished over the past 30 years, offering a careful and important distinction between shame…
Reviewed by Brian Glenney, Philosophy, Gordon College A tribal shaman, an atheist scientist, and a religious philosopher enter a bar. After getting drinks, the ground begins shaking violently and all three quickly duck under the table. The shaman pours out his beer to appease the angry god. The scientist guzzles his, anticipating the worst, and…
This essay follows my earlier contribution in Part I, in which I argued that Christian embodiment is too often one of hierarchical dualism, alienation, and social separation. As those called to live in the reality of God’s redemptive work, we should seek out for ourselves, and inculcate in students, an embodiment of whole-ness, emotional and…
Christian Scholar’s Review is pleased to announce the launch of “Christ Animating Learning”—an interdisciplinary and interactive forum focused on the relationship the Christian faith shares with the practices of teaching and scholarship. “Christ Animating Learning” launched Monday, with posts appearing on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Readers can access it at https://christianscholars.com/blog/ or sign-up at https://christianscholars.com/newsletter/…
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…
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…
During my academic career researching faith-based higher education in North America and around the world, I have received three types of emails. First, parents often write me with their questions about the confusing array of Christian colleges and universities. They are about to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars, but they realize that unlike buying a house, they have little information by which to evaluate the various types of Christian colleges and universities. They have queries about the differences between Texas Christian University, Southern Methodist University, and Baylor University. Two sound more Christian in their names than the other. What are the differences? These parents lack the resources to understand the current landscape and want a guide that can help them.
I. When Holden Caulfield decides to kill some time by going to see a war movie, he reflects that “It was probably the worst thing I could’ve done.” The movie is about an English soldier “that was in the war and loses his memory in the hospital and all,” a soldier who falls in love…
Although Christian ethics masquerades sometimes as a discrete discipline, it is understood better as an ambitious multidisciplinary enterprise, requiring knowledge of (at the very least) biblical studies, theology, philosophy, and the social sciences. Dennis P. Hollinger ’s The Meaning of Sex draws on material from across all these fields as he articulates and defends the…
As I sat down to begin writing this review essay of these recently published books, the sun was rising on the first day of the forty-eighth year of my life. I did not plan to be writing a review essay on my birthday, but it seems fitting given the topics addressed in these books. Like…
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…
