Studies in moral and political psychology increasingly shed light on both the positive and negative political consequences of moral conviction. While people’s convictions engender courage to stand up for their beliefs despite the cost, they also trigger more negative emotions, polarized attitudes, and hostile responses. At a time when our political climate appears increasingly divided…
Guillermo del Toro, Alejandro Iñárritu, and Alfonso Cuarón: Hollywood’s “three amigos” have enjoyed recent financial and critical success and raised the profile of Mexican film-making in the process. In this paper, Scott DeVries finds that the cinematic aesthetics in films from these highly-regarded filmmakers represent the culmination of a long history of Mexican filmmaking, one…
Can game playing possibly be the ideal of existence? Philosopher Bernard Suits argues that it is, using a twist on the moral logic of Aesop’s fabled grasshopper. While many philosophers have weighed in on this question, none have done so with a Christian lens. In this article, we consider Suits’s body of work on the…
Rick Kennedy is the secretary of the Conference on Faith and History and Professor of History at Point Loma Nazarene University. His The First American Evangelical: A Short Life of Cotton Mather is to be published by Eerdmans in the spring of 2015. “Hagiography” is a term that college professors transformed into a pejorative. No…
Just as both men and women are created in God’s image, we are also both fallen. Moreover, there can be sex differences among men and women (often simply in terms of percentages and not absolutes) in the ways they demonstrate virtue and vice. What that means and what the redemption of masculinity and femininity might…
Christian scholars interested in Christ-animated learning have long observed that one major danger to such scholarship is reductionism. George Marsden helpfully summarized the problem in his book, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship, “Once we have a convincing explanation at the level of empirically researched connections we are inclined to think we have a complete…
If we’re going to do this,” DeAmon Harges told me, “we’re going to have to become friends.” The condition set me back on my heels. Of course, I wasn’t opposed to getting to know this Indianapolis-based nonprofit leader, rapidly becoming a national figure in community development conversations. But though I was far from reluctant to…
In the twenty-ninth episode of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Douglas A. Sweeney, Professor of Divinity and Dean of Beeson Divinity School at Samford University. Sweeney begins by talking about the unique space Beeson fills in theological education as a confessional, evangelical, and interdenominational institution. He then goes on to talk about how that unique space is enhanced by Beeson’s commitment to offering an incarnational experience for ministerial formation through in-person teaching, small class sizes, shared worship experiences, and common meals. Ream and Sweeny then transition to talking about Sweeney’s own preparation for leading such an institution as a result of his experiences at Yale University and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. A key component of that preparation in Sweeney’s life is his study of Jonathan Edwards and ways Edwards faith prompted him to pursue truth regardless of where it may reside. Ream and Sweeney close their conversation by talking about the relationship Beeson shares with Samford’s other professional schools as well as ways it seeks to offer continuing education for laypersons.
Practical theology is inherently interdisciplinary. However, this interdisciplinarity is most often engaged through the intellectual work of a single person. In our work on “neighbor love,” the fields of social-cognitive psychology and practical theology have been brought together through the collaborative work of two scholars to better understand the dynamics of dehumanization, the opposite of…
Survey Q: How does the Christian faith inform your message about alcohol?Participant: “We don’t really have a message about alcohol, aside from ‘don’t do it’.” When I worked in public policy, I once spoke at a governor’s conference in North Dakota. After my talk, I struck up a conversation with the Lt. Governor. She made…
An infusion of vocational exploration within the undergraduate science curriculum could provide a path toward more effective healthcare and more significant scientific discoveries. students who pursue these careers often do so because they have a strong desire to help others; yet undergraduate science programs do not typically provide extensive training in communicating with others and…
Business defines itself increasingly as the pursuit of money, but this move into the “iron cage” signals a process of abstraction away from goods internal to business. Scott Waalkes argues that virtues implicit in the Incarnation counter problems in this move by encouraging virtuous Christian business people to work toward the Kingdom of God through…
Editor’s Note: The William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company releases an updated edition of Mark A. Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind today. Reflecting upon that book’s longstanding influence, Indiana Wesleyan University’s President David Wright offers this morning’s post, focusing on the impact Noll’s book had since its original release in 1994, his hopes for…
Colleges and universities often expect their curriculum to engage with the moral formation of their students. In this essay Richard T. McClelland notes that four scientific arguments converge to suggest that this project is unlikely to succeed: the evolutionary origins of human moral systems, the ontogeny of the average human brain, closing the gap between…
In this essay Teri Merrick argues that Christian philosophers are uniquely called to cultivate a disposition of wonder in their students, despite its strong family resemblance to the medieval vice of curiosity (curiositas). The argument hinges on showing that wonder is essential tothe practice of authentic Christian hospitality. Wonder is claimed to be the emotional…
A prior version of this essay was delivered as the Carl F. H. Henry lecture and plenary address at the “Living Accountably” symposium on Faith and Culture at Baylor University in October 2021 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Christian Scholar’s Review. Joel Carpenter is a historian and former provost at Calvin College, and…
The academic year 2020-2021 marked the 50th anniversary of Christian Scholar’s Review (CSR), one of the leading interdisciplinary Christian academic journals. This paper examines the history of CSR, including its precursor The Gordon Review, and highlights some key leaders and important themes in the journal’s work. It also describes the journal’s ability to evolve along…
The fullness of human community that Dante depicts in the final third of his Divine Comedy becomes more imaginable and compelling if we can see its playfulness and can, in turn, show the importance of play in our present communities, especially communities of learning. With help from James P. Carse’s distinction between finite and infinite…
Reviewed by Louis Markos, English, and Robert H. Ray, Humanities, Houston Baptist University England is post-Christian in a way that America is not. Christian stories, imagery, and theological concepts permeate American culture; they do not do so on the other side of the pond. In America, religion still brings respectability; in England, it more often…
Reviewed by Kent Dunnington, Philosophy and Religion, Greenville College The ideas in God and the Multiverse are important for thinking Christians to consider, but this book is written at a high level of specialization and picks up in the middle of a scholarly conversation. The conversation is about whether we have good reasons to think…
