According to the Bible, the Kingdom of Heaven is not of this world: it is not centered in palaces and thrones, but in the hearts and lives of God’s people (Luke 17:21). It came to earth in the symbolism of the Jewish sanctuary (the Tabernacle and the Temple) where God’s presence dwelt. It assumed a…
Stephen N. Bretsen argues that the corporation is the result of several elements, both ancient and modern, that were combined by law and market forces in the mid-19th century. The creation of the corporation has led to various theories of the corporation, some viewing the corporation as a private entity solely serving the interests of…
Ever since Max Weber first named the iron cage over a century ago, people have been interested in unchaining it. Christians may have a particular interest in Weber’s analysis because it points to the influence of religious values both in supporting initially, and then potentially liberating humankind from, the iron cage. Bruno Dyck, Mitchell J….
In the introduction to American Providence (2004), theologian Stephen H. Webb observes, “The cultural elite dismiss the doctrine of providence as the illusory product of fundamentalist fantasies. Providence is caricatured as a theological version of hide-and-seek.” He concedes, “There is some truth to this caricature. When history is treated like a secret message, theology becomes…
Is the discipline of urban planning a religiously neutral affair? If the English Garden City movement is to serve as a worthy example of this discipline, certainly not. After noting its considerable influence on American New Urbanism, Lee Hardy explores in this essay the religious motivation of the Garden City movement through the figure of…
Feelings of tremendous pride well up when I hear about alums who are ascending career ladders on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley, or at locally based tech companies like Amazon. Then, I start to wonder if some of these grads are moving up because they are just good at helping their employers “make money,” but…
Introduction “Before the end of the eighteenth century, man did not exist.” So claimed Michel Foucault in his intellectual archaeology of modernity, The Order of Things. Indeed “man,” he continued, is a quite recent creature, which the demiurge of knowledge fabricated with its own hands less than two hundred years ago: but he has grown…
Feelings of tremendous pride well up when I hear about alums who are ascending career ladders on Wall Street, in Silicon Valley, or at locally based tech companies like Amazon. Then, I start to wonder if some of these grads are moving up because they are just good at helping their employers “make money,” but…
These outstanding and quite different contributions to the dialogue between faith and learning in the general area of contemporary psychology share the fundamental conviction that drives the faith/learning dialogue: that the grandeur and scope of Christian truth and of the Gospel of Jesus Christ defies any minimalist constraints to the merely spiritual or to the…
Mystery, says Joseph G. Kickasola in this essay, is a key component in any film seeking to approach the transcendent. Mystery is a dialectical process, moving between paradox and miracle. The basic characteristics of religious mystery, as articulated by the theologian Louis Dupré, take thematic and formal shape in Paul Haggis’ 2005 Academy-Award winning film…
In this essay Gillis J. Harp notes that some American Evangelicals find it difficult to conceive of a species of conservatism that preserves a moral political economy and some notion of a paternalistic state protecting the less fortunate. Yet this is the kind of conservatism that characterized the thinking of one key strand within the…
In the past two decades the evangelical academy has devoted a good deal of attention to the “Christian scholar” and “Christian scholarship.” While these discussions have born considerable fruit, they lack the scope to cast a vision for Christian higher education in general. Jim Halverson argues that the Christian academy needs to articulate a vision…
George Marsden has taught at Calvin College, Duke University Divinity School, and the University of Notre Dame. His principal books include works on American evangelicalism, Jonathan Edwards, and on Christianity and higher education. He was a founding editor of Christian Scholar’s Review. I am truly grateful to Christian Scholar’s Review for sponsoring this symposium and…
Any professor using a popular professional ethics textbook in their class is likely secularizing the moral thinking of their students. To help you understand why that is the case, I want to outline briefly the history and reemergence of professional ethics and then sketch the nature of most common professional ethics texts. A Brief History…
Though tribalism and conflict have long been a focus of social psychological research, psychology as a discipline has few meta-theories able to serve as organizing principles or prisms for new ways of understanding. This paper draws on the work of philosopher and anthropologist René Girard who uses mimesis (imitation) as a foundational lynchpin for tying…
Since most faculty are trained in thoroughly secular universities and disciplines, it can take some work to figure out what difference Christian faith can have in the practice of your discipline. I have noticed that there is a particular difficulty of this kind for economists. In this blog post, I describe the background for that…
“Neurodiversity’s Visionary Opportunities” creates caring definitions, establishes philosophical principles supporting the common good, offers transcendent ethics of conduct, and proposes biblical, practical life applications. Social science and neuroscience research, understood through a Scriptural lens, is joined to vocational possibilities for neurodiverse individuals. Evangelical scholars have both the legacy of forward thinking and the responsibility to…
Reviewed by Crystal Downing, English and Film Studies, Messiah College Several years ago I began a book review with these words: “Movies can elicit profound, sometimes dismaying, reflections about the reciprocal influence between religion and society, faith and culture, belief and behavior. Rarely, however, do filmgoers consider the influence of religion on the production of…
Today’s world demands that we prepare learners to confront worldview implications for living in a multicultural and pluralistic world. One way we are doing this is through cross-cultural programs, domestically and internationally. While Christian higher education is increasing the number of students in these programs, Naomi Ludeman Smith, D.Min., asks if our institutions can show…
This essay will survey Lewis’s writings and outline the development of his aesthetic ideas in relation to music, emphasizing his enjoyment of Wagner and explaining nuanced references to Wagner throughout Lewis’s works. Moreover, this essay will describe how Lewis’s ideas about God advanced in counterpoint to his ideas about music and how Lewis eventually came…
