Don W. King is Professor of English at Montreat College. Twenty-five years ago most books published on C. S. Lewis fell into two broad categories. On the one hand, many books extolled Lewis as a spiritual mentor, praising him for his cerebral engagement with a culture that often dismissed Christians as intellectual lightweights. On the…
During the last two decades, Craig Bartholomew has authored and edited an impressive number of volumes covering a wide range of subjects (550-551). A partial topical list includes the Bible’s unified story (The Drama of Scripture, 2004, co-authored with Michael Goheen), Christian worldview (Living at the Crossroads: An Introduction to Christian Worldview, 2008), the book…
In the forty-second episode of the second season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with L. Gregory Jones, President of Belmont University. Jones opens by sharing the importance of what he has come to reference as traditioned innovation. In the recent past, the Church understood part of its calling as the creation of institutional responses to social challenges. In the United States alone, the Church once established hospitals, schools, and homes to care for children found without families. While the Church has largely now abdicated such efforts to the state, Jones draws upon the core commitments of Wesleyan theology to argue the Church needs to reimagine what institutions can advance human flourishing today. Jones then discusses how he wrestled with a call to the ministry, the mentors who nurtured that calling, and how his calling eventually led him from full-time faculty service to full-time administrative service. While higher education will likely need to envision itself operating in previously unseen contexts, Jones contends Belmont is well-positioned to partner with the Church to foster expressions of hope. As an example of those expressions, Jones points to Belmont’s recent decision to launch a school of medicine. He then closes by discussing how he and his colleagues at Belmont are seeking to shape the next generation of educators to imagine what roles they can play in aiding human flourishing.
In the thirty-eighth episode of the second season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Robert D. Kelly, President of the University of Portland. Drawing upon his experience as a curricular and co-curricular educator, Kelly begins by discussing the state of community on college campuses and the ways that declines in its perception are linked to increases in students experiencing psychological duress. Drawn from the charisms of the Congregation of Holy Cross, Kelly goes on to describe how they seek to foster community at the University of Portland as defined by the concept of “residentiality” and an environment in which all community members are seen, known, and loved. Kelly then discusses how the charisms that animated the universities he attended impacted his education and vocational discernment process that led him from residence life to a university president. Kelly discusses his appreciation for the sense of community he found at the University Portland when he arrived and how he has sought to enhance it as president. He then closes the conversation by discussing the ways that institutions such as the University of Portland contribute to the Church’s efforts to fulfill its mission in the world.
In the ninth episode of the second season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with David Quigley, Professor of History, Provost, and Dean of Faculties at Boston College. As the chief academic officer, Quigley opens by exploring how he seeks to foster cultures reflective of the unique foci held by a myriad of academic units at Boston College while also striving to foster a culture across those units reflective of the charisms of the founding order, the Society of Jesus or the Jesuits. As an example, he discusses Boston College’s commitment to formative education and how such a process is expressed in the reform and advancement of the core curriculum. Ream and Quigley then discuss Quigley’s calling to history, the teachers and scholars who nurtured it, and the ways Quigley seeks to express that calling through teaching, writing, and service. One way Quigley has sought to express that vocation is by exploring the riches in his childhood hometown of New York City, his present hometowns of Boston and Cambridge, and the creation of means on and beyond the Boston College campus for various publics to appreciate those riches. Some of those recent means include walking tours of Boston for new members of the Boston College faculty and for undergraduate students enrolled in the courses Quigley teaches in the core curriculum. Quigley then discusses the discernment process that led him from service as a full-time faculty member to a full-time administrator along with his commitment to continue to teach at least one course a year. Ream and Quigley close their conversation by exploring Quigley’s vision for the academic vocation, his vision for the academic vocation for Boston College’s faculty, and the relationship those visions share with the Society of Jesus and the Archdiocese of Boston.
In the eighth episode of the second season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Cherie Harder, President of the Trinity Forum. Harder opens by sharing what qualities make for a good conversation, what we have lost in recent years in terms of the practice of such a conversation, and what we can do to re-introduce such a practice. Ream and Harder talk about Harder’s upbringing in Los Alamos, New Mexico, her formal education at Harvard University and the University of Queensland, and the lessons she learned concerning leadership during her years of service on Capitol Hill and in the White House. Transiting to her own leadership of the Trinity Forum, Harder offers how she and her colleagues pursue the Forum’s mission, how they know when have come closest to fulfilling it, and the qualities of guests who are of greatest service to their mission and audience. With so many of those guests often being public intellectuals, Ream and Harder talk about the pressures against scholars from developing the skills public intellectuals need and what can be done to help develop those skills. Harder closes by sharing what figure from history, if given the option, she would most enjoy engaging in conversation.
In the thirty-second episode of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Robin Baker, President of George Fox University. Baker opens by discussing the role of innovation in higher education and how that sense of innovation differs from what one may experience in other non-profit institutions as well as for-profit institutions. As an historian, Baker describes his appreciation for the stories and traditions that define and animate colleges and universities. While he contends change is inevitable, he also contends that those stories and traditions afford change with a purpose or direction. Ream and Baker then talk about the practices and habits that afford administrators, staff members, and faculty members with the ability to orient their respective efforts toward a common mission. They close by discussing how the theological commitments that define the Society of Friends or the Quakers influence the George Fox community and the unique ways that community pursues the relationship shared by faith and learning.
If the thousands of global reports of “near-death experiences” (NDEs) are to be believed, they support much in Christian theology, including consciousness surviving physical death and the existence of a supernatural realm, a supreme being of unfathomable love, an intercessor named Jesus, and an afterlife with both glorious and ghastly destinations. Conversely, many NDE reports…
In light of increasing challenges and pressures in higher education, small liberal arts colleges struggle to maintain their identity and sense of institutional vocation. In too many instances—and stemming from both external attack and internal loss of purpose—liberal arts institutions sometimes seem to have forgotten what it means to offer a broad-based, interdisciplinary, and transformative…
A friend of mine recently shared that when talking with his daughter about her classes at a Christian university, he found himself repeatedly asking, “Did you discuss any constructive proposals?” Her consistent answer was, “No, we really did not have time. We had to spend so much time on deconstructing structures of ____________” (with “deconstructing…
In this paper, Gary L. Karns extends the earlier work of others regarding the biblical purpose of business with a reflective analysis on exchange and marketing as key processes related to the institution of business. Relationships/interdependence, holiness, justice, love stewardship, creativity, hope, and other themes are drawn from the biblical narrative to form a Christian…
Kevin S. Reimer argues that hope contributes to the development of maturity in moral identity. The context for this discussion is a research project on compassionate love in L’Arche communities. Best known through the writings of Jean Vanier and Henri Nouwen, L’Arche is a network of Christian homes for disabled individuals and their caregiver assistants….
“Beyond the Mind” by Todd C. Ream Taylor University recently began a new campaign with the motto of “Beyond the Mind.” Billboards brandished these words along with images of students. Atfirst glance I must admit I was somewhat perplexed by this effort. Passing one of these billboards on Interstate 69 in northeastern Indiana I thought,…
A conviction accepted broadly by contemporary Christians is that the poor should be assisted economically and socially. Despite the variety of Christian and secular assistance programs, little consensus occurs about how the poor should be helped. Cara and Clive Beed argue in this essay from three sets of biblical material (Genesis, the Mosaic Law, and Jesus’…
Nicholas Wolterstorff needs no introduction to readers of Christian Scholar’s Review. He has done as much as anyone alive to promote the kind of integrative scholarship that is CSR’s raison d’être. The project of Christian higher education, in general, does not have a more able spokesperson. Wolterstorff’s writings on Christian scholarship and Christian higher education…
While it would seem that Pietism and Postmodernism share little to no common ground, Roger E. Olson notes that in fact there are several points where they are congenial with each other. Pietism was a movement for church renewal among German Lutherans in the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries. Its ethos of conversional piety eventually became…
In a global digital culture of influencers, followers, and attention-deficit disorders, mimetic theory helps show that imitation shapes much more of human behavior than once thought and that even desire is mimetic. People want what they see others wanting, which often means conflict. It is an idea with complex implications, but its kernel is simple…
Mimetic theory has received very little attention from economists. This essay by an ap-plied microeconomist may be the first article written on mimetic theory directed primarily at an audience of mainstream Anglo-American economists. It outlines the potential con-tributions of mimetic theory to economics, discussing Rene Girard’s core ideas in terms of economics terminology and concepts….
One of the clearest conclusions we can take away from the 2020 election season is that political and ideological polarization has continued to be one of the most powerful forces in our social life. In recent days, I have seen a variety of calls for us to come together as a people, or as a…
Many Christian films released in the last two decades often pitch themselves as a means of evangelizing unbelievers and reassuring the faith of believers. This article uses the film God’s Not Dead as an example of the recent trend in Christian films and argues, using historical parallels, that these films undermine their stated purposes and…
