John M. DePoe points out that Alvin Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism is often considered to follow similarly to an argument given by C. S. Lewis. However, in this essay he suggests there are significant differences in their arguments against naturalism, which his analysis of their arguments emphasizes. The most significant contrast is the standard…
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…
Sociologists Michael Emerson and Christian Smith asked in their book Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America: will the evangelical church remove the color line? Phillip Luke Sinitiere offers a “history” of Divided by Faith since its publication in 2000. This article traces out the book’s impact on scholars, accounting…
In this essay Stephen Moroney provides an updated map to help readers grasp several ways that faith and learning intersect for professors and for students, in the academy and in the classroom, in the curriculum, and in lived experience. Integration approaches often focus on relating the content of the Christian faith to the content of…
Reviewed by Jessica Hooten Wilson, English, John Brown University The human species is being threatened by a visible but unacknowledged enemy, which is not – as has been depicted so well by recent apocalyptic films – a contagious virus, a natural disaster, a mischievous Norse god, nor a potential nuclear war. The enemy is far…
What affects students’ views more, their gender or the type of college they attend (that is, Christian or secular)? Thomas Knecht and Emily Ecklund argue that women at Christian colleges generally have more in common with women at secular colleges than they do with men at their own schools. Nevertheless, students at Christian colleges part…
As Christ-followers become increasingly active in social justice, what is motivating their efforts? Steve L. Porter argues that the sustainability of Christian social action is ultimately dependent on receptivity to the energizing presence of Christ. Felicia Heykoop, Barbara Miller, and Todd Pickett each reflect on the practicalities of implementing such a model in a college,…
Reviewed by Sean F. Evans, Political Science, Union University In The Good of Politics, James Skillen argues that politics is not a necessary evil in our fallen world but an essential component of our Christian calling and a means to create a more just social order. By promoting a more positive view of politics, Skillen…
Reviewed by Ryan McIlhenny, History, Providence Christian College Within the last few decades Christian intellectuals have spent many a conference paper and journal article articulating the relationship between their faith and their professional work as scholars. While I enjoy the occasional rehearsal, I find myself, as a historian, more often bored with the question almost…
Reviewed by John W. Hawthorne, Sociology, Spring Arbor University As a sociology professor and administrator serving several Christian universities over the last three decades plus, I have been fascinated at how institutional ethos varies from school to school. A university may be celebrating a centennial, yet the hiring of people who “fit,” the priorities placed…
In this article Benjamin D. Wayman examines two representative approaches to education in late antiquity—one by the pagan emperor Julian, the other by the Christian bishop Basil—and brings these approaches to bear on Christian higher education today. Engaging the work of Arthur Holmes, Wayman suggests that contemporary Christian liberal arts institutions exemplify Basil’s view of…
Jeffrey Vogel contends that Austin Farrer’s profound wrestling with the question of how best to speak about the divine-world relationship has ongoing relevance for contemporary theology. Though Farrer ultimately denies our ability to grasp the precise manner of God’s activity in the world, his idea that there is a unity between God’s activity in nature…
The burden of this essay is to argue that while cyberspace technologies do open up profound new possibilities for imagining and inhabiting the world, there is a creational limitation to the human imagination: our bodies. Justin Bailey argues that personhood is always grounded in and governed by norms of embodiment – things like corporeality, locality,…
Paul Sullins raises interesting questions about my critical realist personalism. But his critique reflects some confusions. Let me answer his easier criticisms first. I indeed make no distinction between human soul and spirit, seeing no need for such a difference either theologically or psychologically. I also, in fact, do not theorize religion in the two…
Paul Sullins is Professor of Sociology at The Catholic University of America. Introduction As is well known, in contrast to Plato’s theory that the universal forms of the things we experience exist in an ideal realm (idealism) of which we had knowledge prior to experiencing them, Aristotle thought that they did not exist apart from…
Introduction G. K. Chesterton once provocatively quipped, “It might reasonably be maintained that the true object of all human life is play. Earth is a task garden; heaven is a playground.” C. S. Lewis similarly stated, I do not think that the life of Heaven bears any analogy to play or dance in respect of…
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…
