Almost forty years ago Alvin Plantinga’s memorable “Advice to Christian Philosophers” set out a three-fold challenge to encourage members of his own academic tribe, but also “Christian intellectuals generally.” First, “to display . . . more independence of the rest of the philosophical world”; second, to “display more integrity in the sense of integral wholeness”;…
Andy Crouch first burst onto the Christian scene with his book Culture Making. This volume is his latest work, and it continues with his earlier focus on the impact of technology on our lives. With a title like The Life We’re Looking For, there is an immediate hook of interest, as so many people in…
The marks of evangelicalism (biblicism, crucicentrism, conversionism, and activism) support the inclusion of people with disabilities; however, research reveals that having a disability label, especially a developmental disability, is a reliable predictor of whether people and families are present within the church. Using disability studies to identify how certain historical, social, and theological veins within…
In yesterday’s post, I maintained that our talents are, just like our very lives, gifts from God. Recognizing that our lives and talents are gifts has three important implications for athletes: gifts must be cultivated, gifts are temporary, and gifts must be used well. These facts—regarding the nature and purpose of athletic gifts—are not often…
In his recent book The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth, journalist Jonathan Rauch makes a compelling case that our shared sense of reality is a product of a worldwide network of those committed to a set of principles and practices he sets out to articulate. This network includes scientists, other kinds of academics,…
The title of this book parallels George Marsden’s The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship, and the emphasis on Christian teaching is a welcome supplement to Marsden’s focus on Christian scholarship. Indeed, Marsden writes the foreword. This book is a significant complement to the more recent scholarly interest in Christian teaching. Authors Perry Glanzer and Nathan…
Anthropology and other small disciplines enjoyed a period of growth in the late twentieth century and now face reduction and reconfiguration in a ferociously competitive economic and enrollment context. This article describes anthropology’s presence in courses, programs, and faculty positions at Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) member institutions and discusses the vulnerabilities of…
Following the wide public release of the GPT-3 language generator, the internet has been awash in panic and awe—but mostly panic. Headlines like “The College Essay is Dead” (Atlantic) and “Will Chat GPT rot our brains?” (RNS) tell the story of our academic anxiety in the face of this challenge. Others have offered more sanguine…
What are the disciple-making options for churches, schools, and others committed to facilitating the spiritual growth process? Part 1 of this series offered five methods from throughout church history. Here in Part 2, I share four more historical methods, followed by a suggestion for integrating these time-honored approaches into a comprehensive discipleship model that is…
Despite working with college students well beyond Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000-hour “mastery” threshold and being a parent of three between the ages of 18-24, I (Kenman) regularly stumble while trying to span the generation gap. This divide became apparent again on a recent trip to see my older daughter. Perfectly overlapping academic calendars and Covid shutdowns…
“…they want to hang on to different parts of religion that they find to be beneficial to their lives—but strictly on their terms.” – Description of Emerging Adults When I met the older widow, I would be interviewing, I would not describe her externally as rugged. She was small and thin in stature and would…
Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world… The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity. This famous poem by Irish poet and Nobel Prize winner William Yeats captures the anxieties he felt as he scanned the social horizon of his day. The forces…
(Book Review: Sherwood Lingenfelter, Teamwork Cross-Culturally: Christ-Centered Solutions for Leading Multinational Teams. Baker Academic, 2022). In a world where just a word (not to mention phrases, topics, or modes of interaction) may cause offense or even trauma, perhaps the safer course may be to keep to ourselves and at least do no harm. The very…
{The following excerpt comes from Matt Hoven, J.J. Carney, and Max Engel, On the Eighth Day: A Catholic Theology of Sport (Cascade/Wipf & Stock: Eugene, OR, 2022), 115-7. Used with permission from Wipf and Stock Publishers. Available for purchase at wipfandstock.com, Amazon.com, and elsewhere}. The vast majority of elite athletes practice superstitions—despite the fact that…
Like many of us, Victor Reppert, Professor of Philosophy at Glendale Community College in Arizona, has long been intrigued by the thought of C. S. Lewis, especially his so-called argument from reason (developed by Lewis most fully in chapter three of his book Miracles: A Preliminary Study). C. S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea, an obvious allusion…
Peter Leithart’s Deep Comedy is an excellent example of interdisciplinary skill at work, calling upon history, theology, philosophy, and literature to paint a panoramic picture depicting a distinctly Christian worldview of history. This worldview stands in sharp contrast to other non-Christian worldviews, both ancient and (post)modern, that ultimately cave into tragic conclusions. Following the advent…
Introduction In a recent article in SEEN, the journal of Christians in the Visual Arts (CIVA), Beverly Roberts Gaventa poses the question, why bother with Mary? With this simple question, Gaventa identifies the attitude harbored by many Protestant Christians today. For some, however, this casual disregard moves to the level of uneasy suspicion and apprehension…
How, indeed, do we create into “our own Ground Zero realities?” In his thoughtful response to my review of Art + Faith, Makoto Fujimura stresses the importance of looking forward, not backward. This is a point well taken, and worth emphasizing. It is tempting to romanticize the past! And because there are so many past…
In responding to my Art+Faith: A Theology of Making, many have correctly, as Ms. Kresser has done, connected my “slow art” to the pre-industrial mode of creating handmade objects, and to interpret my book as a call to move against the industrial path of utilitarian pragmatism. The return to “handmade culture” of the pre-industrial time…
In July 2021, Tim Muehlhoff and Rick Langer had a lengthy conversation with Theon Hill, a communications scholar whose research delves into the interface between the Black community and white evangelicalism, writing on the relationship between rhetoric and social change—particularly as related to race, culture, and American politics. He has written on the topic of…
