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To What We Aspire: Explorations of the Christian Academic Vocation

November 8, 2024
On August 31, 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson greeted the newest members of Harvard University’s Phi Beta Kappa chapter with an address titled “The American Scholar.” Emerson had abandoned Christian orthodoxy and even Unitarianism for Transcendentalism. However, he had yet to emerge as the leading figure of the intellectual collective who eventually congregated out in Concord.…

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“Apostle to the Disillusioned” — A Response to Tomáš Halík

I appreciate Father Halík’s response to my review of his book. Let me reiterate that it’s an impressive work replete with valuable insights and many nuggets of wisdom and sanity. Despite the criticisms that I offered, his and my analysis of contemporary Christianity/Catholicism overlap considerably. In wondering whether forces extrinsic to the church have caused…

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Saturdays at Seven Conversation Series

“Generous and Gentle Conversations” ft. Pepperdine University’s Jay Brewster I Saturdays at Seven – Season Two, Episode Eleven

In the eleventh episode of the second season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Jay Brewster, Professor of Biology and Provost at Pepperdine University. Brewster begins by discussing the role undergraduate research can play in the lives of students and why its benefits merit it being classified as a high…
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November 6, 2024

Telling New Stories

Last year a group of provosts convened to engage in conversations about Emerson’s essay, “The American Scholar.” Over the period of a year, we looked for insights into the role of the Christian scholar by reflecting on Emerson’s description of the ideal American scholar. He admonished the American scholar to break free from the European…
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November 6, 2024

The Christian Scholar as a Poet

A Tale of Two Emersons In the little New England town where I grew up, two roads were named after Ralph Waldo Emerson—different roads sharing one name. Our split-­level home sat on a half-­acre plot by a meadow; while I lived on this quiet Emerson Road, there was another Emerson Road less than a mile…
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November 6, 2024

Christian Higher Education: Partnering the Chapel and Laboratory

In 2011 Pepperdine University hosted a conference in which Francis S. Collins offered the keynote address. His credentials are extraordinary: Collins is an accomplished research scientist, physician, director of the Human Genome Project, and subsequently director of the National Institutes of Health for three consecutive United States presidents. A devout Christian believer, he authored The…
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November 6, 2024

The Wholehearted, Daring, Balancing Act of Christian Scholarship

The American Scholar On August 31, 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson stepped into the pulpit of First Parish Meetinghouse in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to deliver what would become one of the defining lectures of his life and legacy, “The American Scholar.” Harvard University, having celebrated its bicentennial anniversary not even a year before, was a bastion of…
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August 26, 2024

Eat Lovingly: Christian Ethics for Sustainable and Just Food Systems

What we choose to eat impacts not only our health, but also contributes positively or negatively towards sustainability and justice. How food is produced determines its impact on environmental sustainability  through pollution, soil erosion, ground water depletion, and biodiversity conservation. A food systems lens looks beyond production to consider the complex social issues linking food…
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August 26, 2024

Reorienting Strategy to Shalom

The contemporary concept of strategy is problematic when viewed from ethical and theological perspectives. This concept arose historically from the political-military context of conflicting interests and maneuvers to gain power. When transferred to the realm of business, the concept retained the assumption of conflicting interests expressed in moves and countermoves attempting to achieve advantages over…

Latest from The Christ Animated Learning Blog

The CSR blog is published daily with contributions from over 30 experienced scholars and practitioners discuss how Christ animates learning across a broad range of fields. The CSR blog provides a forum that both creates and curates interdisciplinary conversations about faith and learning in a way that draws and informs leading Christian scholars and practitioners from around the world.

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November 22, 2024

“Apostle to the Disillusioned” — A Response to Tomáš Halík

I appreciate Father Halík’s response to my review of his book. Let me reiterate that it’s an impressive work replete with valuable insights and many nuggets of wisdom and sanity. Despite the criticisms that I offered, his and my analysis of contemporary Christianity/Catholicism overlap considerably. In wondering whether forces extrinsic to the church have caused…
Blog
November 21, 2024

“Apostle to the Disillusioned” — A Response to Thomas Albert Howard

I thank Professor Howard for his attention to my book. I am seriously considering his objections. My book was written during a time of a COVID-­19 pandemic and other global threats and a great division in the world, and the Catholic Church. Many of those threats seem even more serious now, three years later. I…
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November 20, 2024

“Apostle to the Disillusioned” — A Review of Tomáš Halík’s The Afternoon of Christianity

When an influential priest (the Czech, Templeton-­award winning author, teacher, and theologian Tomáš Halík) criticizes “ecclesiastical authorities” while seeking to advance the agenda of another ecclesiastical authority (in-deed, the highest of them all: Pope Francis, to whom the book is dedicated), one can’t help but be hopeful for or at least curious about the future…
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November 19, 2024

Doctors Crossing Borders, and Other Perils of Professional Training

This fall I am teaching an Honors Seminar designed for students in my home university’s College of Health Sciences. The students are all eager to pursue their professional careers as medical doctors, nurses, and physical therapists. Sadly, only 10% of them have expressed any interest in practicing in those parts of the world where they…
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November 18, 2024

When Judgment Hurts

Last month, I attended a conference at Calvin University focused on how to counter reductionism in teaching and education. Certainly, our culture has been in thrall to reductionist tendencies for some time, as the angry, dismissive tone of internet culture and political discourse shows us. Sadly, this tone often makes its way into the classroom,…
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November 15, 2024

“Is it Wrong to Mourn What You Do Not Know?” On Satisfaction and the End of Learning

Many faculty professional development days, hallway dialogues between colleagues, and programs for the integration of faith and learning exist because of the common question: how can we motivate our students to desire learning? Although scaffolded course objectives and early alert systems for struggling students are designed with the ostensible end of effective teaching in mind,…

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Established in 1970, Christian Scholar’s Review is a medium for communication among Christians who have been called to an academic vocation. Its primary objective is the publication of peer-reviewed scholarship and research, within and across the disciplines, that advances the integration of faith and learning and contributes to a broader and more unified understanding of the nature of creation, culture, and vocation and the responsibilities of those whom God has created. It also provides a forum for discussion of pedagogical and theoretical issues related to Christian higher education. It invites contributions from Christian scholars of all historic traditions, and from others sympathetic to the task of religiously-informed scholarship, that advance the work of Christian academic communities and enhance mutual understanding with other religious and academic communities.

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