Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres – Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière – WGA11837 – Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière – Wikipedia The French painter Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres was a beautiful embalmer of royalty. His paintings of emperors and aristocrats are as ravishing as they are uncanny, with their rubbery limbs, elongated necks and bovine eyes. His portrait of Mademoiselle Caroline Riviere,…
Yesterday’s post unpacked the problematic character of modern positivist Christian conceptualization and prioritization of truth. Though truth undoubtably matters enormously, it was proposed that absolute truth about metaphysical matters is not attainable, that assertions of propositional truth claims are prone to exercising power and producing interpersonal alienation, and that in profound experiential (not necessarily epistemological)…
Part I: Truth My colleague had just finished delivering a public lecture on the challenge that intersex persons—those born with a mix of male and female organs, chromosomes, and hormones—present to the church. A perturbed member of the audience was expressing his disapproval of her call for the Christian church to understand, affirm, and welcome…
April is still a ways off so, no, I’m not trying to pull anyone’s leg. I really do find joy in academic administration…let me explain. My administrative work began as a department chair about 10 years ago when my dean asked if I’d consider serving. Honestly, I was a bit wary of some percolating challenges…
Conversations surrounding the practical use of artificial intelligence in student academic work seem to be less straight-forward than those having to do with plagiarism. In the academic culture that directly surrounds me, a concerted effort has been made to offer a nuanced approach to the topic. Rather than simply vilifying the use of AI in…
Harold Laswell famously defined politics as “who gets what, when, and how.” These decisions are surely as fraught now as they were when Aristotle wrote about politics in ancient Athens. Politics has always been about power: who has the power to determine who gets what, when, and how? When it comes to power, Christians live…
Becoming by Beholding is a retrieval project. Reaching back into the Christian tradition, Davis invites her readers on an “archeological dig into the historic Christian imaginative tradition” in order to recover the central role of the imagination in spiritual formation (x). Her ultimate aim in recovering and retrieving is to restore the readers’ vision, such…
Pulling together each Christian Scholar’s Review issue is a labor of love and a labor-intensive team effort. Usually, at the end of my prefaces, I thank one of our transitioning team members, but I’m not sure how many people make it to the end of my quarterly missives. So, this time around, I start with…
“All his life long man is imprisoned by our institutions.” Rousseau, Emile, Book 1 In the last decade, politicians, academics, and activists have called for abolishing various institutions (e.g., “abolish the police,” “abolish USAID”). These calls emerge out of the declining trust in almost every institution, which is at a historic low for particular institutions…
I remember teaching a weekend course on American Christian history in the late 1990s. Since it was a weekend course for working adults, I used several videos in those late Saturday afternoon hours when eyes glazed and heads nodded. I found some great videos about the history of American Catholicism and African American Christianity, but…
In the twenty-ninth episode of the second season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Stephen M. Barr, President of the Society of Catholic Scientists and Professor of Physics Emeritus at the University of Delaware. Barr begins by unpacking the basics of the Grand Unified Theory for non-physicists. He details why the pursuit of such a theory has garnered widespread interest, the explanations that harbor the greatest potential, and the experimental efforts that need to be made to prove or disprove those explanations. Barr then shares that he always knew that mathematics and physics would be fundamental to how he exercised his vocation and that the only real decision he had to make was when choosing particle or high-energy physics as a sub-field. Barr discusses the ways the Society of Catholic Scientists has grown in recent years along with the programming and fellowship they offer including programs for high school students focused on cultivating a love for science as well as an appreciation for the relationship faith and science share. Barr then concludes by discussing his understanding of the academic vocation, the virtues physicists need to cultivate, and the vices against which physicists need to be vigilant.
Like most college professors in this Year of our Lord 2025, I sometimes think about what I would do if my position got the axe. I never come up with any good ideas, and my institution is relatively healthy, so I usually just let it go and get on with my work. Tomorrow will take…
“Grab drinks? We don’t even share the same elevators!” For the past five years, in addition to being a professor of communication, I’ve served as co-director of Biola University’s Winsome Conviction Project that seeks to open lines of communication between people entrenched in ideological, political, or theological disagreements. When I was asked to respond to…
Editor’s Note: This past year we enjoyed reading Peter J. Dougherty’s essay “In Praise of Lunch.” The essay inspired CSR’s Publisher, Todd Ream, to organize a series of responses to his article. Thus, today’s post reprints the essay with his permission. Then, over the next three days, we will post three responses from different faculty….
In the twenty-fourth episode of the second season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Satyan L. Devadoss, the Fletcher Jones Professor of Applied Mathematics and Professor of Engineering at the University of San Diego. Devadoss opens by exploring how mathematicians quite often find themselves encountering that which is mysterious. Acknowledging that mystery, persisting through it, and, at times, identifying results that may explain it yield intrinsic joy for mathematicians. Devadoss discusses that while he experienced that sense of joy in high school and college, he lost contact with it for the first few years of graduate school. Eventually, he found that playfulness—playfulness that offered little to no immediate use was one way to reconnect with that joy. Devadoss claims that eventually scholars in other disciplines may identify a use for what mathematicians offer but that process, while still with no guarantee, may take decades or even centuries. Devadoss’s own book-length projects concerning discrete and computational geometry as well as unsolved mathematical problems were designed as sites where that joy may be found. Devadoss then closes by discussing the rapid acquisition of power mathematicians are presently experiencing and how the greatest expression of their vocation during this season may be to “bend the knee” and share that power with scholars working in other fields—fields, according to Devadoss, that often demand persistence through far more complexity than mathematicians face.
Some months ago, I rode to the airport with Uber, as I have done many times before and since. I noticed before the car arrived that the driver had high ratings for “excellent conversation.” Sure enough, it was not long before he started raising topics for discussion. He was driving for Uber on his day…
In my family, like many Korean American families, we regularly communicate using Konglish (Korean + English). We rely on Konglish when something complicated or multilayered can be better expressed using a combination of Korean and English words. The other day, during an evening walk with my spouse, I said the following about two students who…
Becoming by Beholding is a retrieval project. Reaching back into the Christian tradition, Davis invites her readers on an “archeological dig into the historic Christian imaginative tradition” in order to recover the central role of the imagination in spiritual formation (x). Her ultimate aim in recovering and retrieving is to restore the readers’ vision, such…
In the twenty-sixth episode of the second season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Mark Behrens, the John and Margaret McAndrews Professor of Mathematics at the University of Notre Dame. Behrens begins by unpacking the unique ways mathematics provides logical and replicable results. He also notes mathematics can prove mysterious when connections between results one did not expect, or at least initially did not expect, emerge. Identifying those connections, however, yield some of the greatest forms of satisfaction mathematicians can experience. Behrens shifts to talking through the ways various mentors fostered his love for mathematics and eventually his expertise in topology. As one who served as the editor for various prominent mathematics journals, Behrens also offers insights concerning the rapid nature of new results emerging in subdisciplines such as topology. He also discusses how mathematics, once a discipline dominated by individual efforts, is now dominated by collaborative efforts. The conversation then closes with Behrens sharing his understanding of the virtues mathematicians are well served by cultivating, the vices mathematicians are also well-served by confronting, and the ways mathematicians can be of greater service to scholars in other disciplines.
Harold Laswell famously defined politics as “who gets what, when, and how.” These decisions are surely as fraught now as they were when Aristotle wrote about politics in ancient Athens. Politics has always been about power: who has the power to determine who gets what, when, and how? When it comes to power, Christians live…
