Randal Rauser argues that Focus on the Family’s popular lay-worldview curriculum entitled The Truth Project™fails to provide a true Christian worldview education, and instead evinces the marks of indoctrination. He begins with the core problem that that the curriculum encourages simplistic binary categories which distort the issues and inhibit the student from developing skills of…
In the sixteenth episode of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Willie Jennings, Associate Professor of Systematic Theology and Africana Studies, Yale University. Jennings begins by talking about defining theology, where efforts to practice theology went awry in recent decades in the North Atlantic world, and how a properly ordered and, in turn, properly practiced theology proves critical to the Church, the seminary, and the Church-related university. Jennings then talks about his widely acclaimed The Christian Imagination, ways in which it was misunderstood and ways in which it was properly understood. Ream and Jennings then close their conversation by talking about Jennings’s After Whiteness and the implications of ideas defining that book for the seminary as well as the Church-related university.
Empirical research on work as a calling has grown exponentially over the last two decades; it is now a global and vibrant area of scholarship within the fields of psychology and organizational behavior. Results emerging from research on calling address questions of major interest to Christians, yet remain almost entirely overlooked within contemporary Christian discourse…
In the forty-eighth episode of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with David A. Skeel, Jr., the S. Samuel Arsht Professor of Corporate Law at the University of Pennsylvania. Skeel opens the conversation by talking about how his interests in bankruptcy law developed and about the theological commitments that are woven into history of bankruptcy law in the United States. Ream and Skeel then talk about Skeel’s formation as a legal scholar, how his education shaped him, and about how his experience as a clerk, an associate in a large firm, and a young law professor at Temple University and then at the University of Pennsylvania all played important roles. Skeel then offers insights concerning how he makes decisions concerning public service and what led him to his service as Chair of the Financial and Management Oversight Board for Puerto Rico. Ream and Skeel then close their conversation with Skeel offering his understanding of the academic vocation and his advice to aspiring attorneys and legal scholars.
In the seventeenth episode of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Thomas Albert Howard, Professor of Humanities and the Phyllis and Richard Duesenberg Chair in Christian Ethics, Valparaiso University. Tal, as he is known to his friends, also serves as a Senior Fellow with the Lilly Network of Church-Related Colleges and Universities (until recently, the Lilly Fellows Program). Howard begins by talking about the role theology played in the research university and the ways the German research university and, more recently, the American research university influenced one another. Howard then builds upon those observations concerning theology and the research university as ways of framing his observations about the challenges and opportunities faced by scholars grappling with the relationship shared by faith and learning. Howard’s critically acclaimed writing related to ecumenical and interfaith relations forms the middle of the conversation. Ream and Howard then close their conversation by exploring the virtues that prove most critical to the exercise of the Christian academic vocation.
Both Aristotle and Tolkien are authors of short works seemingly concentrated on one form of literary art. Both works contain references which seem to extend further than that single art and offer insights into the worth and purpose of art more generally. Both men understand the relevant processes of mind of the artist in a…
Perry L. Glanzer notes that over the past two decades institutional growth in Christian higher education has slowed to a trickle in the West, but in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa it has taken off. The remarkable vigor and growth of Christianity in the global South and East is an obvious driver behind the rise…
Does the way Christians talk about work apply only to the privileged? For the majority of the world’s people, fulfilling work is far from attainable. Even in the United States during unprecedented high employment, college graduates have become more likely to work in jobs that are low-paying, part-time, or not requiring a college degree. Meanwhile…
When challenged in Luke 10 by a cheeky expert in Mosaic law who asked what he must do to inherit eternal life, Jesus turns the question back on his interlocutor and inquires what the Jewish scriptures say. The scholar can easily rehearse the formula found in the Torah: love God, and love your neighbor as…
In the 1980s the idea emerged that psychological problems are often caused by unremembered sexual abuse, and that healing requires retrieval of memory. While much of main-stream psychology later questioned the validity and/or reliability of such memories, many evangelical therapists and ministry leaders have continued to be “carriers” of recovered memory approaches. Using case study…
In this essay, Annalee R. Ward explores Gran Torino’s moral order by engaging standpoint theory with Robert Wuthnow’s symbolic boundaries of moral order. In a journey of moral enlightenment, learning to communicate across boundaries anchors the story in hope. Along the way, Walt Kowalski encounters challenges to his moral structures which may affirm a redemptive…
In the thirty-eighth episode of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Gregory E. Sterling, the Lillian Claus Professor of New Testament and the Henry L. Slack Dean at Yale University Divinity School. Sterling begins by talking about the role Yale Divinity School and the scholars who have served on its faculty played in American religious life. Sterling, in particular, talks about the ways the institution’s role has changed over the course of its 200-year history and, as is the case for leaders of many divinity schools and seminaries, his awareness that the Church and the culture are changing once again. The challenge that Sterling notes, however, is the course of the present changes remains uncertain. Ream and Sterling then talk about Sterling’s calling to the ministry and to serve as a New Testament scholar. They discuss Sterling’s most recent book, Shaping the Past to Define the Present, as well as the editorial leadership Sterling offers for a commentary series concerning Philo. Ream and Sterling discuss the inspiration and vision for Yale Divinity School’s Living Village Project and then close by discussing how Sterling discerns when to exercise his role as a public intellectual committed to the well-being of the Church, the university, and the relationship the Church and the university share.
In this essay, Charlie W. Starr argues that evangelical Christians do not know what art is for. In an age when the best that even theologians can offer in response to the arts is “culture war” or “worldview analysis,” Christians who want to find the intersection between faith and film should look to C. S….
In the late 1940s, budding American evangelist Bob Pierce visited Amoy, China, to preach the gospel at a girl’s school run by Dutch Reformed missionary Tena Hoelkeboer. Not knowing much about Chinese culture, Pierce told students to go home and tell their parents that they were going to become Christians. One of them actually did…
In the forty-eighth episode of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Cathleen Kaveny, the Darald and Juliet Libby Millenium Professor of Theology and Law at Boston College. Ream opens by asking Kaveny about her efforts concerning interdisciplinary scholarship, how such efforts break down siloes often defining academe, and how the challenges plaguing society often transcend those siloes. One critical component of interdisciplinary scholarship that Kaveny stresses is the full appropriation of questions that arise from any set of relevant disciplines. Doing so, however, demands the exercise of various virtues including humility and the recognition that one may need to seek the assistance of colleagues. Ream and Kaveny discuss Kaveny’s education and the freedom she found to transcend those siloes as an undergraduate at Princeton as well as a joint J.D./Ph.D. student at Yale. Kaveny then explains the debt of gratitude she owes to several teachers as well as Judge John T. Noonan for whom she clerked for how they shaped her sense of vocation.
The idea that persons are or contain a nonphysical soul that is capable of existing after the destruction of the human body is customarily called “dualism.” Over the course of two millennia, the Christian tradition has been solidly in the dualist camp. Most Christians have affirmed the existence of the soul, its survival of death…
Until recently, art has commonly been treated as ancillary to the educational mission and intellectual discourse that are at the core of Christian higher education. Using the exhibition Charis: Boundary Crossings—Neighbors, Strangers, Family, Friends as a case study, Curator and Project Director Rachel Hostetter Smith argues that art has a distinct capacity to serve as…
Theory and history offer two contrasting ways for apprehending the large and multifaceted concept of “empire.” The six books under consideration sort themselves according to their respective tendencies to treat “empire” theoretically or historically. A concept of “empire” driven by theory will show centripetal trajectories and risk becoming reductionist while historical concepts will expand to…
In the context of the Moral and Faith Development graduate course I teach every fall, I am always surprised by my graduate students’ reactions to the topic of sex. I always end the course by requiring students to read a book about the sexual behaviors of college students. Before discussing the book, I ask students…
In this article, Yvonne S. Smith, Sharon G. Johnson, and Erik M. Hiller explore a theological view of competition. Competition is engrained in Western economic and social systems and Christians are conflicted about it. Is the God of love also the God of the competitive atmosphere of sports, business, or law? Or does God hate…
