I. When Holden Caulfield decides to kill some time by going to see a war movie, he reflects that “It was probably the worst thing I could’ve done.” The movie is about an English soldier “that was in the war and loses his memory in the hospital and all,” a soldier who falls in love…
Contemporary attitudes toward student boredom have varied greatly. Whereas some have viewed it as a relatively trivial, even inevitable fact of classroom life, others have sought remediation through improved engagement techniques. Lost in many of these discussions, however, is a clear sense of the moral stakes associated with boredom. Drawing upon the work of Polish…
Steven R. Harmon is Visiting Associate Professor of Historical Theology, School of Divinity, Gardner-Webb University. I am grateful to Kimlyn Bender for his perceptive review of Baptist Identity and the Ecumenical Future and to Christian Scholar’s Review for publishing not only such an extensive review of the book, but also my response to it along…
R. Scott Smith is Professor of Ethics and Christian Apologetics at Biola University. In 2013, Amos Yong surveyed the status of evangelical higher education, in part with a focus on integration. As he observed, the dominant model amongst many, if not most, faculty in evangelical institutions “fuses scholarship and teaching under the label of faith-learning…
Although it is empirically established that traditional religion enhances fertility, how it increases childbearing is not clear. This paper is an exploratory qualitative study investigating how religion influences decisions about intended fertility and family size. Most specifically, Michael Emerson and George Yancey ask how, if at all, do the religious understand children and family differently….
Colleges and universities look for great leadership from their presidents—now more than ever. Economic turmoil, technological innovation, rapid globalization, increased government regulation, media scrutiny, public skepticism about the mission of higher education, student unrest, the volatile climate of social media, and the sheer complexity of campus life in the twenty-first century all require exceptional management,…
This essay interprets poems by Robert Frost and Richard Wilbur alongside illustrative anecdotes from philosophical works by Martin Heidegger and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. The four texts have in common the attention they give to the human misperception of phenomena. Considered together, they make the case that occasional misperception is not a defeater for ordinary human confidence…
When Al-Qaida attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, Samuel P. Huntington was nearing the end of a distinguished career as a political scientist. He had been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences before the age of 40. Later he became president of the American Political Science Association. His…
It is a rare event when a scholar makes an argument that garners widespread academic and popular attention—such can become the stuff of legend. In 1993, Samuel Huntington did just that when he penned an article in Foreign Affairs entitled “The Clash of Civilizations?” In it, he posited that the end of the Cold War…
At first blush, the idea of thinking fast sounds desirable. In our culture, doing things quickly is often more highly valued than taking time. This preference translates into a tendency to give precedence to activities that do not require deep thought. Although it feels strange to have to make this argument, this preference for shallow…
It is hardly possible to examine comprehensively the state of the evangelical mind today without giving careful attention to the impact of digital media. The rise of digital media continues to disrupt and transform communications, education, business, entertainment, politics, forms of social organization, and more. Roughly half the global population today uses the Internet; in…
Editor’s Note: Due to an earlier failure of the e-mail distribution of this three-part post, we are reposting it over the next three days. It has been approximately twenty-five years since the “turn to religion” in Shakespeare studies. When I informally polled a few colleagues in history, psychology, and social work about a turn to…
In the third episode of the third season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Carlos Eire, the T. Lawrason Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University. Eire begins by recounting how reading Thomas Á Kempis’s The Imitation of Christ transformed his life. As a boy in Havana, Cuba, Eire and his brother were sent ahead of his parents to the United States. When they left, they could take a limited number of clothes and one book. The book which his parents gave him was The Imitation of Christ. At age fourteen, the message of dying unto oneself that Eire found in that book transformed how he came to understand himself and his relationship with the world around him. That process then became the basis for his two-volume memoir, Waiting for Snow in Havana and Learning to Die in Miami. Eire then discusses how the role that transformation played in his discernment over a calling to history and, in particular to Reformation history. His first book was a study of Protestant iconoclasm but, most recently Eire focused on what became of the critically acclaimed They Flew. Drawing upon the wisdom accumulated over the decades he committed to the craft of history, Eire concludes by noting the virtues he finds most critical to cultivate as well as the vices he finds most critical to confront. While humility is the amongst the virtues Eire believes is most fundamental to pursuing truth, pride, not surprisingly, is a vice he cautions often plagues academe.
In the second episode of the third season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Kevin J. Brown, President of Asbury University. Brown opens by discussing how proximity as an educator is a critical component of engaging and forming the moral sensibilities of students. Such an understanding also proves beneficial when mending the divide often separating generations. Part of what fosters that divide is the search on which younger generations are embarking to ground their faith in something authentic, something “less than” the accoutrements often associated with faith communities populated by previous generations. “Less than” then translates into more in terms of engagement and discipleship. As a member of Generation X, Brown then discusses the process by which he came to see business as central to his vocation and, in particular, how he came to see more at stake in business than mere financial transactions. That process led him to pursue additional graduate study in Scotland where he learned to integrate theology and business. Those lessons also helped Brown view education as a series of spaces in which students are formed toward holding and exercising rightly order their loves. Brown describes his rapid rise to Asbury’s presidency and the shift in vocational responsibilities he experienced, responsibilities that were on national and international display in 2023 during the Second Great Revival. While he and his colleagues sought to make sure the core educational functions of the university’s mission continued to be exercised, they also sought ways that lessons offered by the revival could etch themselves into the institution’s ongoing culture. Brown then closes by discussing the value of Church-related colleges and universities, and the ways the relationship with the Church proves critical now and in years to come.
It has been approximately twenty-five years since the “turn to religion” in Shakespeare studies. When I informally polled a few colleagues in history, psychology, and social work about a turn to religion in their fields of study, each identified a pivotal publication in the late 1990s or early 2000s in the scholarly literature. One is…
The word vocation today often refers to one’s work or employment in the world. This secularized, individualistic connotation is discernible from definitions like “a strong feeling of suitability for a particular career or occupation” or the use of the word calling to describe such a “feeling.” Nevertheless, in what follows, the link between vocation and…
In the forty-seventh episode of the second season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Sandra Cassady, President of Rockhurst University. Cassady opens by discussing the state of programs in the health sciences, where schools are meeting student and societal needs, and where growth in those areas continues. Church-related colleges and universities, according to Cassady, share a special investment in these programs. Pedagogically, these programs express an investment in whole person education. Societally, they strive to honor the dignity of people created in God’s image by caring for the whole person. Cassady then discusses her own formation as a faculty member and administrator of programs in the health sciences during her years of service at St. Ambrose University. Cassady began as a physical therapist but then also embraced a calling to prepare the next generation of physical therapists, occupational therapists, nurses, etc. She then left St. Ambrose when accepting an appointment as President of Rockhurst University. As Cassady explains, part of that process involved exploring the commitments of a diocesan university such as St. Ambrose and a Jesuit university such as Rockhurst. In addition to its mission, part of what Cassady found appealing was Rockhurst’s commitment to expand its health sciences offerings in ways that benefit the university’s neighbors in Kansas City. Cassady then concludes by drawing upon her experience as a faculty member and administrator to share how she understands the characteristics and qualities of the academic vocation and the relationship it shares with the Church.
Not all value can be measured in dollars. Consider a cautionary tale shared by Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel. While he was studying as an Oxford Rhodes Scholar in the 1970s, one of the all-women’s colleges, St. Anne’s, became tangled in a debate over evolving sexual mores. Resident halls for men and women had traditionally been…
In the fortieth episode of the second season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Cheryl A. McConnell, President of Saint Joseph’s University. McConnell begins by discussing how ethical leadership emerged for her as an area of interest and eventually even became an area of expertise. Part of that emergence has to do with her background as a practitioner and as a scholar in accounting, a discipline which often asks for moral decisions to be made for which no preset battery of answers exist. As a result, moral formation must continue incrementally as one grows as a leader in the profession, allowing for ethical decision making to be reflexive or habitual. McConnell discusses the transition she made from serving as an accounting practitioner to an accounting scholar and how that process of discernment was set into motion when the firm for which she worked asked her to lead training seminars for junior colleagues. The transition she made from being a dean to a provost and now to a president was rooted in a discernment process that existed at the intersection of an institution’s leadership needs and the intrinsic joy she derived from the work. The one limitation McConnell shares that she set was that her willingness to serve where needed was limited to Jesuit colleges and universities due to her abiding belief in the missions of those institutions and the charisms that animate them. As provost and then as president of Saint Joseph’s University, McConnell explores how she and her colleagues fostered relationships with institutions in Philadelphia that would allow the university to expand its service in the health sciences. She then closes by discussing how the Jesuit institutions in Philadelphia work together to provide orientation for new board members along with ongoing formation.
The tired but persistent cultural narrative of the conflict between science and religion continues to impede fruitful discussions by obscuring the meaningful and important role that religious identity plays in the lives of scientists and researchers. The conflict narrative is particularly problematic as faculty and mentors seek to prepare interested Christian undergraduates to attend graduate…
