Editor’s Note: Due to the recent social media conversation about forgiving student debt, we thought it would be timely to reprint this earlier CSR blog post about this topic. Thanks–PLG “Just do it.” That was not the mantra of Nike being repeated in a recent Inside Higher Education article; it was the advice of a…
In a recent New York Times column, Ross Douthat explored “the reasons behind a seemingly unreasonable belief” (namely, the belief that the presidential election was stolen). Some points that Douthat raises in his essay about this “post-truth” age have implications for our task in helping our students to research well, with soundness of materials as…
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….
In the early eighties I was a junior at a large research university in British Columbia. One quiet Friday evening, in the century old residence hall, a friend and I were sitting in the empty hallway while she tried to teach me how to play poker. About an hour into her unsuccessful attempts, she leaned…
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…
Reviewed by Tim Muehlhoff, Professor of Communication, Biola University C. Christopher Smith, senior pastor of Englewood Christian Church (Indianapolis, IN), describes early attempts to bring diverse people in his church together to talk as a “hot mess.” Yelling and sarcasm were default modes as members gathered Sunday nights to discuss potentially volatile issues. Out of…
Mariam Kamell Kovalishyn is assistant professor of New Testament studies at Regent College. Three very different books on Romans emerged around the same time in 2019, authored by Scot McKnight, by Sylvia Keesmaat and Brian Walsh, and by Jackson W. Not one claims or seeks to be a commentary; rather, they each provide a sort of…
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…
Today’s post is an excerpt of a longer talk given by David Lyle Jeffrey in May 2019 at a conference sponsored by the Christian Association for World Languages (CAWL). We are thankful for the opportunity to share Dr. Jeffrey’s wisdom for the benefit of Christian scholars of all disciplines. His commitment to the importance and power…
Every college student wants to be successful. What do you need for college success? The Jewish and Christian traditions are quite clear about how you should begin any quest for learning or what the Scriptures call wisdom: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom” (Proverbs 1:7). In fact, the very first university…
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,…
It is a noble aspiration that Christian scholars contribute in more constructive ways to discussions in the public arena about the common good. Careful thinking, however, needs to be done about where and how such voices will be cultivated. The university has an essential and indeed imperative role in such formation, but it will need…
Justin Ariel Bailey is assistant professor of theology at Dordt University. His research explores the intersections of Christian theology, culture, and ministry, and his forthcoming book is entitled Reimagining Apologetics: The Beauty of Faith in a Secular Age (IVP Academic, 2020). Every semester, I teach a Bible survey course, mostly to freshmen undergraduates. Early in…
Does the way Christians talk about work apply only to the privileged? For the majority of the world’s people, fulfilling work is far from attainable. Even in the United States during unprecedented high employment, college graduates have become more likely to work in jobs that are low-paying, part-time, or not requiring a college degree. Meanwhile…
Mark A. Peters is professor of music and director of the Center for Teaching and the Good Life at Trinity Christian College. He is president of the Society for Christian Scholarship in Music and book review co-editor for Christian Scholar’s Review. Whatever you learn, remember: the learning must make you more, not less, human.—Elie Wiesel…
Melissa Rovig Vanden Bout is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Trinity Christian College. How shall American Christians understand our relationship to racism? There are a great many possibilities open to us, and our present time functions as a crucible for this decision. We could deny the scope or power of racism, locate it in a…
Reviewed by Nathan Jones, Doctoral Candidate in Theology and Music, Duke University Divinity School When you see the names “Bach” and “John Eliot Gardiner” together on the cover of a superb work of art, it hardly comes as a surprise. After all, Gardiner is one of the world’s leading conductors, whose recordings of Bach’s vocal…
Many liberal arts colleges express a commitment to educate the whole person; yet, educating for emotional formation rarely receives explicit attention. In The Abolition of Man C.S. Lewis argues that proper moral education essentially involves emotional formation informed by an understanding of emotions as recognitions of objective values that function together with reason to yield…
Reviewed by Philip D. Byers, Residence Life, Bethel University David R. Swartz has produced a book that is at once innovative historiography and enlivening prose. Using the 1973 Thanksgiving Workshop of Evangelical Social Concern and its resulting “Chicago Declaration” as his framework, Swartz narrates and analyzes the mid-twentieth-century progressive movement in American evangelicalism. Examining many…
