Craig E. Mattson, Arthur DeKruyter Chair in Faith and Communication at Calvin University, writes an engaging and in-depth review of five books to pose and suggest an answer to the question of how faith-based academic institutions should define their role and identity in the multi-directional process of community engagement and development. The books used in…
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…
I have recently realized that, despite my best intentions, I am guilty of chronological snobbery. It is a humbling—but helpful—understanding. It has helped me to make sense out of my own bewilderment over these past few years. Let me explain. I teach British literature, specializing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (but like most professors,…
It is cliche at this point to observe that humanistic learning is declining in American colleges and universities, including Christian ones. There are new data points each year, but the conclusion is always the same: faculty positions supporting particular arts and sciences majors, such as classics, history, philosophy, etc., are being reduced. It is easy…
Reviewed by Matthew Hill, History, Liberty University For too long, the religious dimension of the American presidency has been neglected. Outside the never-ending debate on the religious convictions of the Founding Fathers, four of whom became president, far too little research has been devoted to this subject. The religious dimensions of the Civil War have…
Dear Prof. Van Wijs, I finally finished my PhD and have begun a new position assistant professor of computer science at a Christian university in my home state. As I face my upcoming classes, I find myself feeling anxious about teaching. I have several new courses to teach, and several are outside my primary area…
It was a Tuesday after Saturday’s graduation events. My assistant brought the day’s mail into my office and set the pile in front of me. She had tossed away the obvious junk mail and had taken the correspondence that I needed to deal with out of the envelopes. “I did not open this one,” she…
This post originally appeared in Current. Princeton University’s Classics Department made national headlines this spring for its decision to add an additional track to its BA degree. While curricular reviews and changes rarely attract attention, in this case the new track proved controversial: It allows students to complete a BA in classics without taking any…
Reviewed by Pamela Jordan-Long, The Center for the Study of C. S. Lewis & Friends, Taylor University Of making many books about C. S. Lewis there is no end. Even Lewisian scholars say that everything there is to say about Lewis has already been said. Yet, remarkably, Alister McGrath’s The Intellectual World of C. S….
Matthew DeLong is Professor of Mathematics at Taylor University. The transition to modernity was shaped by changes in science, politics, religion, economics, and culture. Such changes were contested, and from them emerged a new way of perceiving the world. As the subtitle to Infinitesimal suggests, Amir Alexander makes the startling assertion that ground zero of…
A new school year is beginning, and I’m thinking about how to teach cultural history. There are a lot of reasons to get “meta” right now, as a cultural historian. (Specifically, I’m a professor of Art History and Visual Studies.) First, there’s mode of delivery, and the cultural implications of that. If “the medium is the…
Jenell Paris’ post this week introduces a new book for which she wrote the introduction Christian colleges and universities vary one from another, but share a central commitment to Christ, and to teaching students in a “Christ-animated” manner. As an anthropologist, I rely on interdisciplinary study to deepen my knowledge of Scripture so that I…
With this issue we celebrate fifty years of God’s faithfulness to Christian Scholar’s Review. As with any anniversary we look to our past, consider the current status of Christian scholarship, and look forward with thanksgiving and some trepidation to the next fifty years. We have also given ourselves a bit of a gift, sprucing up…
A significant disadvantage attending the hyper-specialized, professionalized nature of so much academic production today is the absence of synthesis. Scholars in diverse fields often treat similar issues (concerning things like identity, society, and the nature of truth)—but from different vantage points and with different vocabularies. They seldom see that they are duplicating each other’s efforts,…
“A MAN with a conviction is a hard man to change. Tell him you disagree and he turns away. Show him facts or figures and he questions your sources. Appeal to logic and he fails to see your point.” This is how social psychologists Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken and Stanley Schachter begin their book, When…
We were aboard the Fyodor Dostoevsky, in port on the Moscow River, just after returning from an early morning visit to Red Square, where we had been puzzled by why it was completely devoid of visitors. Our guide, Natasha, had queried a lone soldier who said it had been cleared for a movie production. As…
In 2005, with a two million dollar grant from the Lilly Endowment, Mount St. Mary’s University in Maryland hosted their first Callings Conference. The purpose of the grant and conference was to delve deeply into the meaning and implications of vocation, particularly as defined from the point of view of faith both generically and in…
It’s not surprising that a consistent finding across multiple subfields of psychology is that people are creatures of habit. We mostly go through our days with preferred rhythms of sleeping, eating, working, playing, and engaging with others. But habits and preferences shape more than daily big-ticket items. They also influence the nano-second processes by which…
John Everett Millais, A Huguenot, on St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1852 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Huguenot,_on_St._Bartholomew%27s_Day In 1852, the pious British artist John Everett Millais (who has been featured elsewhere in this blog), painted a heart-rending image called A Huguenot, on St Bartholomew’s Day. Here, beside an ivied wall, two young lovers furtively embrace. The air is thick and the…
