A mere four years – something of a lifetime – ago, the Berkley Center asked many scholars and activists to offer advice for the new administration of President Trump. At the time, I argued that the new administration needed to leverage its multilateral assets: that freedom of religion or belief needed American leadership, but that…
During the last volume year the total number of submissions was fifty-nine—slightly below normal; the only significant anomaly was that because our theme issue for summer 2012 was moved back to summer 2013 (see below), we technically had no submissions for a theme issue in this year. Our current acceptance-to-publication timeframe is about twelve months….
Reviewed by David A. Hoekema, Philosophy, Calvin College “In spite of the indispensable use of images in our yearning to make sense of reality, there has not been sufficient attention to the aesthetic in the debate between theism and naturalism” (3). This opening comment conveys the motivation for a wide-ranging and provocative book by a…
I am appreciative of the opportunity to interview Dr. Russell M. Jeung, who is a Professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University and co-founder of Stop AAPI [Asian American Pacific Islander] Hate. His efforts in tracking anti-Asian incidents during the COVID-19 pandemic has received widespread attention in both academic and public spheres,…
Among the modern artists my students resonate with most are the German Expressionists who worked mainly in the years just preceding and including the First World War. Something about their frank, garish and often gruesome work feels honest. With its jagged lines and dark narratives, it doesn’t sugar-coat or lie. It’s jarringly autobiographical, shamelessly confessional….
The academic year 2020-2021 marked the 50th anniversary of the founding of Christian Scholar’s Review (CSR). It was born in 1970 out of an earlier academic journal, The Gordon Review, which was created by Gordon College faculty and came in time to be sponsored by that college. The process of transition from The Gordon Review…
This post is dedicated to my mother, Deborah Elizabeth Mitchell (née Vestal), whose faith, hope, and love will always sustain me. Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand. –Isaiah 64:8 Growing up, my mom, née Vestal, would sometimes remind me…
In her recent CSR blog post (November 18, 2021), Marybeth Baggett invited professors to reconsider their grading practices through the lens of spiritual disciplines, guided by Richard Foster’s influential book, Celebration of Discipline. Baggett’s essay argued that grading student work, while a necessary part of teachers’ “mundane” work, can be rejuvenated when understood as an…
It is an honor to have The Disenchantment of Secular Discourse reviewed by a person and scholar of the stature of Nicholas Wolterstorff – and a relief to see that the review is generally favorable. Wolterstorff presents the principal arguments of the book succinctly and sympathetically and offers some perceptive criticisms. These criticisms prompt me…
“America needs more private intellectuals.” So tweeted Baylor University philosopher and occasional public intellectual Francis Beckwith. Perhaps Beckwith had in mind a particular public intellectual’s unfortunate essay or social media misadventure. There is little doubt public intellectuals draw fire from all sides. Scholars wholly dedicated to their guild and the “pure” pursuit of knowledge can…
Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. Col. 3:16 For Christians, most virtue words do not describe virtues unless they are directed properly. To put one’s faith,…
The sky is falling rhetoric tends to be overused when it comes to Christian higher education (CHE). This past month, one person tweeted upon learning that Trinity International University is discontinuing residential and in-person undergraduate education, “Christian higher ed is imploding.” This tweet was less reflective of empirical reality and more reflective of the struggles…
Geoffrey Galt Harpham has argued that conversation about crisis is fundamental to the humanities in the United States, an insight I extend to the liberal arts more generally. Certainly, crisis-talk has spanned my own career. From internal academic anxiety over the wrecking ball of poststructuralism, to the cognate cultural wars of the eighties and nineties,…
Public speaking is one of the most common courses that one will find in the general education curriculum. Yet, we recently discovered that every Protestant university but six does not use a bit of Christian rhetoric when describing what they teach for that required class. All the course descriptions look just like any other secular…
Since most faculty are trained in thoroughly secular universities and disciplines, it can take some work to figure out what difference Christian faith can have in the practice of your discipline. I have noticed that there is a particular difficulty of this kind for economists. In this blog post, I describe the background for that…
It is the time of year when those of us who serve as teachers, from college to Kindergarten, are ramping up our preparation for the upcoming term. In my home university, new faculty are arriving on campus this week for onboarding, next week will be devoted to faculty meetings at the university and college level,…
For my own part, I know I must keep alive in myself what I have once known and grown into. —Thomas Merton My wide-ranging but low-built apartment complex, constructed before I was born, values its old maples and oaks, though time has reduced their coverage. Staking a personal claim on my small yard, I planted…
Reviewed by Debra Paxton-Buursma, Education, Calvin College Everyone loves stories of transformation, especially when recounting crisis-creating contingencies that line the fabric of life. Despite human capacity and faith-filled living, change and loss lodge in our lives threatening the stability of our core beliefs, logic, and practices. When crisis hits, we often find the doctrine of…
