“The larger the number is, to which that private affection extends, the more apt men [and women] are, through the narrowness of their sight, to mistake it for true virtue.” – Jonathan Edwards “We are looking for moral answers right now because we do not have any.” The comment startled me. During various trips to…
In her two-part series, “Disabling Ableism,” Melanie A. Howard encourages Christian educators “to engage in our mission-driven work by rooting out the ableism that separates us from one another and denies us the flourishing for which were created.” We warmly affirm Howard’s intent to raise awareness of the often-latent bias of ableism, to increase access…
I have taught at Houston Christian (formerly Houston Baptist) University since 1991, and I am happy to report that the university has spent the last two decades intentionally recruiting, encouraging, and equipping professors committed to the integration of faith and learning in every discipline of the modern university. I, along with dozens of my colleagues,…
I have taught at Houston Christian (formerly Houston Baptist) University since 1991, and I am happy to report that the university has spent the last two decades intentionally recruiting, encouraging, and equipping professors committed to the integration of faith and learning in every discipline of the modern university. I, along with dozens of my colleagues,…
Wisdom often feels like a vague, shadowy concept—something we all want but do not really understand. Sometimes we equate wisdom with intelligence, but it certainly is not guaranteed by a high IQ. Sometimes we talk about wisdom as if it were a synonym for inner peace or an automatic characteristic gained from old age or…
Arnold’s Influence on Hartshorne In his intellectual autobiography, titled The Darkness and the Light (a title that is an allusion to a famous line from William Wordsworth’s poem “The Simplon Pass”), Hartshorne tells us that he grew up in a religious household; his father was an Episcopal minister. The seeds of his difficulties with orthodox…
Amos Yong is J. Rodman Williams Professor of Theology at Regent University School of Divinity in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Evangelical higher education appears to be a booming business in the twenty-first century. Enrollment and expansion have persisted at much higher rates over the last two decades for schools affiliated with the Council for Christian Colleges…
Throughout our scholarly careers, we have consistently been struck by an empirical finding we often encounter. The most important religious variable predictor in studies is usually not how people identify (e.g., Christian) or what they believe (e.g., certain views of the Bible). Instead, it is simply a weekly action. How often do they go to…
Nicholas Wolterstorff is the Noah Porter Emeritus Professor of Philosophical Theology at Yale University. Let me begin my response to this fine essay autobiographically. When I was a student at Calvin College in the early 1950s I was inducted into the Americanized version of the Dutch Reformed understanding of Christian higher education. The talk was…
With the theme of hospitable readers and neighboring texts, the classical Greek virtue of hospitality meets the Christian virtue of loving one’s neighbor as one’s self. Either virtue involves looking out for the well-being of those whom we encounter, whether as guest or as neighbor, including those whose claim on us might not seem natural…
At first blush, the idea of thinking fast sounds desirable. In our culture, doing things quickly is often more highly valued than taking time. This preference translates into a tendency to give precedence to activities that do not require deep thought. Although it feels strange to have to make this argument, this preference for shallow…
Reviewed by Peter J. Snyder, Business, Calvin University The Prosperity Paradox is an important new book that takes a somewhat different look at the issue of poverty. Using the lens of innovation, Clayton Christensen, Efosa Ojomo, and Karen Dillon range across, to greater and lesser extents, economics, public policy, history, sociology, and development to reframe…
Mark Zuckerberg wants it. Elon Musk says we need it because of robots. Joe Biden rejected it. Ben Sasse thinks we should be talking about it. Milton Friedman sort of liked it, and even Charles Murray thinks it may be a good idea. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke favorably about it as a potential…
For the first post of the New Year on the Christ Animating Learning Blog, I think it is important to assess how far we have come with regard to Christianity and higher learning. We should certainly rejoice in the fact that, by God’s grace, Christians have created hundreds of Christian educational institutions around the world….
Editor’s Note: Practical Matters is a new section that will occasionally appear that seeks to highlight how theology is being integrated into the overall rhetoric, conversations, and structure of the Christian college or university outside of the discipline or department of Theology, Christian studies, Religion, and so on. Timothy A. Gabrielson is Assistant Professor of…
Reviewed by Perry L. Glanzer, Educational Foundations, Baylor University Do not let the title of this book fool you. Mike Higton, Academic Co-Director of the Cambridge Inter-faith Programme, and Senior Lecturer in Theology at the University of Exeter, has not written this book for scholars working in Christian colleges and universities. Instead, he penned his…
Reviewed by Holly Catterton Allen, Child and Family Studies, John Brown University Justin Barrett’s basic claim in Born Believers is that due to unique features of the developing human mind, children from a very young age are naturally receptive to the idea that there is at least one god—that is, they are “born believers.” Barrett…
A pioneer in the academic field of sport and spirituality, Shirl Hoffman has long sought to return sport to its roots in play. In 2010, he published his magnum opus, Good Game: Christianity and the Culture of Sport. While the product of a lifetime of thoughtful, sympathetic engagement with evangelical sports ministries, Hoffman’s Good Game is the most thoroughly sustained…
“[Curriculum] has been one of those places where we have told ourselves who we are.” —Frederick Rudolph One of the odd things about most forms of general education is how they fail to prepare students for life-long quests related to stewardship. What do I mean? Consider the fact that the University of North Carolina at…
Let’s start with the proposition that conversation about civility among evan-gelical Christians today has too much of the book of Proverbs and not enough of the book of Job. In contrast with the complex emotional world of Job (more on that later), the proverbists have a settled, centered comfortability with the world—so long as one…
