“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…
“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…
Integratio Press recently published Professing Christ: Christian Tradition and Faith-Learning Integration in Public Universities. Edited by Jonathan Pettigrew and Robert H. Woods Jr., this book includes contributions from 18 current or former faculty at public universities, including a past president of the National Communication Association and one of the world’s leading scholars on ethics in…
I recently took up an appointment at Samford University as Professor of Early American History after stepping down as Dean of Howard College of Arts and Sciences. I took great joy in serving in that role for seven years after coming to the university in July 2016 from my previous appointment as Associate Dean in…
In yesterday’s post, I shared my journey through finding my way in faith and learning up through graduate school. As perhaps for many of us, I then wrestled through this crisis of faith for the next two years at the University of Chicago and then Northwestern. I found a sympathetic mentor for my PhD program,…
Since it is an election year, I wondered if I could find evidence that Christian universities help their students contemplate excellent Christian citizenship. As mentioned in an earlier post, my research team examined the general education requirements at 231 Protestant colleges requiring at least one Bible or theology course. We chose these institutions because they showed…
Matthew Barrett’s The Reformation as Renewal: Retrieving the One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church seeks to retell the story of the Protestant Reformation by focusing on the connection between the Reformation and the theological heritage of the medieval West. Drawing on the historiographical interventions of a previous generation, Barrett sets out to reveal that the…
As an Industrial / Organizational Psychologist, I have spent almost 30 years studying leaders. Not so much leadership theories but leaders themselves. How do they think about being a leader? What motivates them? How do they make sense about being in this role, and how much of their identity is wrapped up in being a…
One of the most powerful metaphors in Christian social thought is the idea of stewardship. It comes right out of Genesis, with the idea that God gives humans a job to do on earth, and in doing that job, we are serving God. The idea is used widely in writing about the environment, economics, and…
With the ability to captivate our hearts, awaken imaginations and paint pictures of what it means to be a good person, stories help form (and malform) character and influence behavior. In our work as educators, we must take great care in both choosing the stories we tell and in being aware of those we unwittingly convey….
I used to ask this question as a student. It took me a while to get to know the University staff who were Christians. I was aware of pressing ethical issues and controversial questions about science and the Bible; I knew science was a demanding career that might compete with church commitments; I knew some…
What qualities does it take to be a great scientist? You might think of intellect, great experimental technique, original thinking, and endless hard work. Humility may not be the first thing that springs to mind. Nevertheless, humility is a very helpful virtue in science, and I think it has played an important role part in…
In his essay “Is Theology Poetry?” C. S. Lewis brushed off the then-growing fear that the authority of science threatened to supplant Christianity. He was not convinced and wrote, “The picture so often painted of Christians huddling together on an ever-narrower strip of beach while the incoming tide of ‘Science’ mounts higher and higher corresponds…
It is a truism in higher education, especially at liberal-arts institutions, that interdisciplinary collaboration promotes academic excellence—that it forms well-rounded students and fosters communities of intellectual creativity. We want our students to combine ideas from multiple disciplines in order to be critical and flexible thinkers. They should study philosophy and literature so that they can…
Clark Kerr, former president of the University of California, once quipped that universities have become “a series of individual faculty entrepreneurs held together by a common grievance over parking.” While playful, the quip gives voice to what can be called a crisis of coherence in higher education, an absence of broad, unifying values and commitments…
Clark Kerr, former president of the University of California, once quipped that universities have become “a series of individual faculty entrepreneurs held together by a common grievance over parking.” While playful, the quip gives voice to what can be called a crisis of coherence in higher education, an absence of broad, unifying values and commitments…
University students often face a challenging number of life-changing choices during their brief time on campus. I often joke with my incoming freshmen that during my time as a college student, I decided on which university I would attend (twice), what major I would pursue (again twice), where I would live (three times), where I…
With the ability to captivate our hearts, awaken imaginations and paint pictures of what it means to be a good person, stories help form (and malform) character and influence behavior. In our work as educators, we must take great care in both choosing the stories we tell and in being aware of those we unwittingly convey….
I recently opened my daily New York Times morning e-mail to these sentences from David Leonhardt: “Good morning. The pandemic may now be in permanent retreat in the U.S.” A good morning indeed. With the changes in the CDC guidelines suggesting easing restrictions on mask wearing outside, and then inside, for those who are fully…
Does God Make a Difference? is a worthy book to which readers will react differently depending upon the extent to which they have been exposed to Warren Nord’s general arguments. In the foreword Charles Haynes reminds the reader that this is Nord’s final book. Nord in his opening remarks also seems to be aware that…
