Christian Scholar’s Review is pleased to announce the celebration of its 50th anniversary. On Thursday, October 28, 2021, CSR will release its 50th anniversary issue (51:1) at a reception following an address offered by Joel A. Carpenter, Calvin University’s Provost Emeritus and Senior Research Fellow with the Nagel Institute, as part of Baylor University’s annual…
Gretchen Schwarz and Jill Martin argue that contemporary Christian evangelicals often perceive American public schools as evil, and many have retrenched into their own private schools. These schools generally offer a highly traditional, narrow, even classical curriculum. In contrast, Comenius, one of the Reformation era’s outstanding scholars and educators, developed a wealth of ideas that…
The “integration of faith and learning” has become a touchstone of many Evangelical Protestant higher education institutions in recent decades. Martin Spence argues that modern Evangelical scholars and teachers have intellectual forbears who long ago raised similar questions about the relationship between faith and learning. The author introduces one such individual, the nineteenth-century British Baptist…
Reviewed by Shaun C. Henson, Theology and Religion, University of Oxford Distinction and novelty are necessarily rarer descriptors for books on the dialogue between science and religion nowadays, due partly to a thematic overlap caused by the sheer number of them in production in recent decades. Alexei Nesteruk, a senior lecturer in mathematics at the…
Reviewed by Dave Klanderman, Mathematics and Statistics, Calvin University “For such as time as this.” This phrase serves as part of a final justification offered by Mordecai in his plea to Esther to use her role as Queen to help to save the Hebrews from Haman’s plot to destroy them (Esther 4:12-14ff). In a similar…
Reviewed by Shaun C. Henson, Theology and Religion, University of Oxford Distinction and novelty are necessarily rarer descriptors for books on the dialogue between science and religion nowadays, due partly to a thematic overlap caused by the sheer number of them in production in recent decades. Alexei Nesteruk, a senior lecturer in mathematics at the…
The “integration of faith and learning” has become a touchstone of many Evangelical Protestant higher education institutions in recent decades. Martin Spence argues that modern Evangelical scholars and teachers have intellectual forbears who long ago raised similar questions about the relationship between faith and learning. The author introduces one such individual, the nineteenth-century British Baptist…
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…
Traditionally, Christianity has forbidden fornication, claiming that it is an offense against God. But why might God see it as a transgression? Miguel A. Endara contends that natural law reasoning applied to sexual anthropology helps us to discover that fornication promotes human objectification and existential fragmentation. In accord with natural law, that which undermines human flourishing is morally illicit….
Kevin N. Flatt teaches history at Redeemer University. Does the discipline of history need a reformation? Mark Sandle and William Van Arragon think so. In this brief but far-ranging and thought-provoking book for students, the two historians from The King’s University, a Christian liberal arts university in Edmonton, Alberta, offer their take on what is wrong…
Christian Scholar’s Review is pleased to announce the launch of “Christ Animating Learning”—an interdisciplinary and interactive forum focused on the relationship the Christian faith shares with the practices of teaching and scholarship. “Christ Animating Learning” launched Monday, with posts appearing on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Readers can access it at https://christianscholars.com/blog/ or sign-up at https://christianscholars.com/newsletter/…
It is a noble aspiration that Christian scholars contribute in more constructive ways to discussions in the public arena about the common good. Careful thinking, however, needs to be done about where and how such voices will be cultivated. The university has an essential and indeed imperative role in such formation, but it will need…
Rebecca C. Hong is Senior Director of Educational Effectiveness and Assessment at Loyola Marymount University. On September 6, 2018, Amber Guyger, a white female off-duty Dallas police officer entered the home of Botham Jean, an unarmed 26-year-old black neighbor, and fatally shot him to death. Guyger testified that when she entered the home of Jean,…
Overlooked by film critics, screenwriter Stirling Silliphant crafted subversive Christian allegory into his Academy Award-winning adaptation of mystery novel In the Heat of the Night. This essay demonstrates that Silliphant reframed both the book’s main character, Virgil Tibbs, and the book’s murder victim as countercultural Christ-figures who confront the lifeless and racist cultural Christian religion…
Timothy Hendrickson is Assistant Professor of Literature and Languages and Co-Coordinator of Adjunct Care at Trinity Christian College. Prior to assuming a full-time role in the fall of 2018, Professor Hendrickson served Trinity in an adjunct capacity for seven years. Despite its modest length (under 170 pages, excluding appendices and index), Herb Childress’s The Adjunct…
This essay examines the intersecting pedagogical and theological stakes of conflating our practices of reading and writing. With attention to ongoing “turf wars” within English departments, as well as to broader university trends toward prioritizing ROI, assessable artifacts, and marketable skills, it argues that we should de-couple reading and writing, recognizing them as distinctive practices…
Reviewed by Dale Goldsmith, Religion/Academic Dean, Retired Until modern times, dying and death had been an immediate reality to everyone. Then – this is the short version – medicine came up with ways to postpone dying and distance us from death; and we made a point to shut it out of our thinking. Our institutions…
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…
