This blog introduces our fall special-themed issue exploring the Christian academic vocation through the lens of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay on the scholarly vocation. The articles are currently available on our website, while the paper copies of the issue will be delivered to our sponsor institutions later this month. On August 31, 1837, Emerson greeted…
Last year a group of provosts convened to engage in conversations about Emerson’s essay, “The American Scholar.” Over the period of a year, we looked for insights into the role of the Christian scholar by reflecting on Emerson’s description of the ideal American scholar. He admonished the American scholar to break free from the European…
The American Scholar On August 31, 1837, Ralph Waldo Emerson stepped into the pulpit of First Parish Meetinghouse in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to deliver what would become one of the defining lectures of his life and legacy, “The American Scholar.” Harvard University, having celebrated its bicentennial anniversary not even a year before, was a bastion of…
This fall I am teaching an Honors Seminar designed for students in my home university’s College of Health Sciences. The students are all eager to pursue their professional careers as medical doctors, nurses, and physical therapists. Sadly, only 10% of them have expressed any interest in practicing in those parts of the world where they…
How have evangelical faculties fared in their efforts to move beyond the scandal Mark Noll so sharply exposed nearly a quarter of a century ago? This is the question I take up in this essay, writing as a mid-career faculty member of a Council for Christian Colleges & Universities (CCCU) institution. What follows are historical…
Cave paintings and rusty ochre brushstrokes appear on the cover of Darrel R. Falk’s recently published book, On the (Divine) Origin of Our Species. These earliest examples of art call out to us today. Falk describes the European cave paintings in the Chauvet caves, of horses, rhinos, and lions, which were discovered in the twentieth…
The Centers for Disease Control concluded in a recent study that approximately 61 million – one in four – Americans have a classified and diagnosed disability. The National Institute of Health (NIH) indicated in 2022 that the disability community represents more than 27% of the U.S. adult population, making that community the single largest minority…
One of the first questions I ask students in my Christian Legal Thought seminar is what they expect Christianity might have to say about law. A common answer is that Christian teaching can provide guidance about what the legal rules should be. Many of my students have been taught the importance of having a Christian…
Every once in a while, I come across an article or book that exemplifies the best of what Christ-animated scholarship can and should be. I recently came across one such article in the field of psychology that addressed the topic of human worth. The concepts of self-worth and self-esteem have a long history in the…
In the forty-fifth episode of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with John Witte, Jr., the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of Law, McDonald Distinguished Professor, and Faculty Director of Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory University. Witte begins by discussing how the 3 Fs – faith, freedom, and family or the things for which people would die – serve as the connective threads between his otherwise diverse expressions of the academic vocation. He then unpacks how those threads are woven into a sample of his books including From Sacrament to Contract, Law and Protestantism, and The Reformation of Rights. Ream and Witte talk about Witte’s education at Calvin College and Harvard University along with texts and mentors who left a great impact upon him. Those influences then found another form of confirmation in the invitation Witte recently received to serve as a bicentenary Gifford lecturer, delivering “A New Calvinist Reformation of Rights.” Ream and Witte then close their conversation by discussing Witte’s appreciation for the academic vocation, the virtues which make the expression of such a vocation possible, and the vices against which legal scholars must guard.
Kevin Vallier has written a valuable exposition and critique of what he describes as radical religious alternatives to liberalism. Vallier is an Eastern Orthodox political philosopher at Bowling Green State University and a strong defender of the liberal tradition in politics. Liberalism in this sense refers broadly to such things as constitutional government, respect for…
One exercise on political partisanship I enjoy doing with my classes is to read out a list of words and phrases while the students work together to classify them as either red or blue—Republican or Democrat. It starts off simply with broad groups in the population: the students all “know” that farmers are red while…
Kevin Vallier has written a valuable exposition and critique of what he describes as radical religious alternatives to liberalism. Vallier is an Eastern Orthodox political philosopher at Bowling Green State University and a strong defender of the liberal tradition in politics. Liberalism in this sense refers broadly to such things as constitutional government, respect for…
One exercise on political partisanship I enjoy doing with my classes is to read out a list of words and phrases while the students work together to classify them as either red or blue—Republican or Democrat. It starts off simply with broad groups in the population: the students all “know” that farmers are red while…
Over the past two decades, the Faith & Work movement has highlighted the potential impact of Christians in business when they serve and work with purpose. To achieve this, a framework for Biblical business practice is needed. This paper integrates Biblical foundations with business research to create a wisdom-based framework for impactful business strategy. By…
“When a person’s virtue is not equal to his position, all will suffer.” When education fails to foster virtue in professional and especially business schools the world is in peril. This essay addresses some of the significant challenges in educating practically wise business professionals. Universities need to recover a Thomistic view of practical wisdom that…
In the fortieth episode of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Robert J. Wuthnow, the Gerhard R. Andlinger ʼ52 Professor of Social Sciences at Princeton University. Ream and Wuthnow start by discussing the limitations that come with comparisons between recent waves of college student activism and the activism of the 1960s and early 1970s. They transition to exploring Wuthnow’s experience as a doctoral student at the University of California at Berkely, the ways he learned to frame questions, and the ways he learned to determine whether questions merited pursuit. Ream and Wuthnow then discuss the questions Wuthnow pursued over the course of his career and arc of the books he wrote. The end of that arc, ironically, led Wuthnow to explore the changing nature of the social fabric of communities comparable to the one in which he grew up as a child in rural Kansas. Finally, Wuthnow discusses the virtues he believed proved most critical to the exercise of the academic vocation including the role gratitude played for him over the course of his career.
When I was a boy growing up in Hong Kong, both my parents were professors. They worked some long days during the long semesters and sometimes brought papers home to grade on the kitchen table after dinner. At the same time, they never seemed to be working deep into the night, and summers were a…
In the thirty-seventh episode of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Karl E. Johnson, Executive Director of the Consortium of Christian Study Centers. Johnson begins by offering details concerning his experiences with outdoor education and the way those experiences serve as formative means to ends that include the cultivation of intellectual, moral, and theological virtues. Those details also include how Johnson’s disillusionment with the nature of the co-curricular offerings he encountered during his undergraduate years led him to outdoor education—experiences that then occurred in locales as close as the ropes course on campus and as far as peaks in Ecuador exceeding 20,000 feet. Ream and Johnson then discuss Johnson’s establishment of Chesterton House, the Christian study center at Cornell University, and offerings that include Bible study, community meals, lectures, discussions, sequences of reading, and a residential community. They explore where Chesterton House fits within the growing range of study centers established to serve students and scholars at various research universities. Ream and Johnson then close their discussion by discussing ways to foster the relationships that Christian study centers share with the Church as well as Church-related colleges and universities.
In the thirty-fifth episode of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with David Emmanuel Goatley, President of Fuller Theological Seminary. Goatley opens by exploring what is theologically at stake when we seek to practice justice and the relationship that practice inherently shares with ecumenism and missions. Ream and Goatley shift to talking about Goatley’s calling to ministry, the importance of God’s efforts to prepare people for the contexts where they are called serve, and the importance of God’s efforts to prepare the contexts to receive the people who are called to serve them. Two of the most important people through whom God worked when preparing Goatley for his calling to ministry were his parents—a father who pastored the same church for almost fifty years and a mother who was served in a host of contexts in the community where they lived including, at the end of her career, being an advocate for childhood well-being. They close their conversation by exploring Goatley’s research concerning flourishing in ministry, thriving congregations, and how those lessons are incorporated into how he and his colleagues at Fuller serve their students.
