Tracy Fessenden’s new book, Culture and Redemption, maps the genealogy of what has been called “the Protestant consensus” and its affect on American literature from the Puritans to the modernists. In one sense this is an old and discredited story. For the past 25 years, the multicultural left has disputed that there has ever been…
Popular sentiment may cast the American family as portrayed in the 1950s and early 1960s as a Platonic ideal. Children were precocious yet respectful of authority—enter Wally and Beaver Cleaver. Wives were the matriarchs of homes which were always in good order—enter June Cleaver. Husbands were dutiful providers who arrived home shortly after 5:00 p.m….
Take up the cause of the fatherless.Isaiah 1:17 America currently has the largest percentage of children raised without two parents in the world (23% compared to 7% for the rest of the world). We also have the highest-ever number of children living without fathers in America (same web source). Our children and society will experience the…
In part 1 of this series, I attempted to respond to a student who asked, “Where is God in Ukraine?” My answer, in part, was to appeal to the oft-neglected doctrine of common grace where God saturates our rebellious world with good gifts in the form of medical discoveries, technology, morality, science, the arts, and…
Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from Hank Reichman and Karen Swallow Prior’s dialogue originally printed in the Academe Blog (an AAUP publication). We have reprinted a portion of it with permission. HR: In my Understanding Academic Freedom (p. 102-03), I discussed a professor’s refusal to write a letter of reference for a student seeking to study…
Not far from our home in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, is one of southern Ontario’s premier universities, McMaster, known internationally as a centre for advanced scientific and medical research. What few remember is that the university once had a connection with the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Québec, the only remnant of which is the presence…
Ever since Arthur Holmes published The Idea of a Christian College, scholars with a stake in Christian higher education have reflected on the relationship between faith and learning. With entire works devoted to scholarship, teaching, and student affairs at Christian colleges and universities, it is perplexing that the athletics department at these institutions has not…
Andy Crouch first burst onto the Christian scene with his book Culture Making. This volume is his latest work, and it continues with his earlier focus on the impact of technology on our lives. With a title like The Life We’re Looking For, there is an immediate hook of interest, as so many people in…
When you find out you are expecting your first baby—before you tell anyone else—the Internet already knows. It also assumes that you will be making space in your home to facilitate the presence of this new life, thus commencing a bombardment of advertisements for all manner of materialistic goods that pretend to assure you: all…
The first-year experience (FYE) is a decades-old programmatic initiative aimed at introducing students to campus culture, improving transitions, and promoting retention, often through a course or classroom seminar. Research shows that FYE courses are valuable for students in general, as well as in specific subpopulations (e.g., international, first-gen, etc.) typically in need of additional support…
*This is part 1 of a three-part series. Part 2 expands upon the bodily consequences of a misaligned allegiance to sports, which subvert the holistic well-being of participants, thus warping the imago Dei in both the enactors of recipients of physical injustice. Part 3 offers theological insights into how orthodoxy and orthopraxy related to the…
The last year was big for me as an academic: I received tenure, published a book, and was awarded a sabbatical. Yet my colleagues and students tend not to ask me about these landmarks. They instead know me as a gardener, thanks to the pictures I post to social media. Truth be told, I find…
Contemporary attitudes toward student boredom have varied greatly. Whereas some have viewed it as a relatively trivial, even inevitable fact of classroom life, others have sought remediation through improved engagement techniques. Lost in many of these discussions, however, is a clear sense of the moral stakes associated with boredom. Drawing upon the work of Polish…
Perhaps nowhere is the variety of American evangelicalism more apparent than among the 150 or so faith-based institutions that belong to the Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU). While these institutions have learned to cooperate in areas such as faculty research, campus technology, and library services, in their core function—teaching and learning—Christian colleges and…
In Gary Shteyngart’s near-future novel Super Sad True Love Story, a poignant scene occurs when forty-something Lenny tries to read a book to twenty-something Eunice, a college graduate with the most prestigious education of her day. Eunice, faced with a Milan Kundera tome, admits, “I never really learned to read texts. … Just to scan…
Jeffrey P. Bouman is the Director of the Service-Learning Center at Calvin College. My neighbor Don strolled by my house one early evening last June while I was out front in my urban neighborhood, reading the newspaper. We shot the breeze, talked about meeting new neighbors, the weather, the ethics of drone strikes, and Don’s…
The Editors of Christian Scholar’s Review are pleased to announce a decision in the awarding of the Charles J. Miller Christian Scholar’s Award for best article for Volume 47. The winners are George Yancey and Michael O. Emerson for their article “Having Kids: Assessing Differences in Fertility Desires between Religious and Nonreligious Individuals.” The article…
Christian Scholar’s Review is pleased to announce the appointment of Margaret Diddams as Editor. As of Monday, August, 17, 2020, Diddams will oversee the print journal’s commitment to serving as a premier outlet for Christian scholarship. Diddams recently retired as Provost of Wheaton College, where she championed faith and learning scholarship. On her retirement,…
Golden anniversaries are occasions for celebration, reflection, and transition. The advent of the fiftieth volume of Christian Scholar’s Review marks such a moment. The staying power of CSR is a testament to Christian academic communities which have provided it support but more substantively to the subtle but important, even necessary, mission which it pursues. CSR…
Christian Scholar’s Review is pleased to announce the appointment of two new editors. Effectively immediately, David Lauber will begin service as the theology co-editor and Benjamin J. Wetzel will begin service as the history and political science editor.
