The Emerging Scholars Blog

Yesterday, I took a look back at the past year of the ESN blog. Today, I want to get your thoughts about where we go for the coming year.

Way back in May 2009, Tom and I put together some thoughts on what we would blog about. Here’s what we came up with:

Academic vocation and calling: What’s the nature of the academic life? What’s the nature of the university – its systems, assumptions, problems, glories? And why would a person (specifically, a follower of Christ) follow an academic vocation? Does a Christian academic look, act, or live any differently from any other academic or any other Christian?

The role of faith and theology in specific academic disciplines: We’ll be looking at issues that arise when one takes faith, theology, and their academic discipline seriously. “Science and religion” is the pair most often discussed in mainstream and Christian media, but other disciplines – the humanities, social sciences, professions – are having discussions and controversies of their own. We encourage discussion on all of our posts, but in this theme especially, we seek your perspective as experts in your respective disciplines.

Spiritual formation in the academy: How do you nurture your relationship with God and your spiritual life in the midst of the university? Or, put another way, how can one be a Christian in the academy? We’ll be looking at Christian practices, spiritual disciplines, and resources to help you grow closer to Christ.

We also decided to post a Week in Review every Friday, with links to articles, books, and websites that we had been considering.

How have we done? Have we been faithful to our vision last May?

Just staying consistent, though, isn’t enough. (Hobgoblins of little minds and all that.)

Have we overlooked any topics or themes? What issues affecting your life as a Christian in the academy have we neglected? Is there anything that we need to spend less time on or drop altogether?

Leave your thoughts in the comments, or send them directly to me. Thanks!

For InterVarsity staff, summer is a time to look back on the past academic year and prepare our plans for the coming year. I thought it might be good to do the same here on the ESN blog. Tomorrow, I’m going to ask what you think we ought to write about for the coming year, but today, I’m taking a look back.

Above: A word cloud of the ESN Blog’s most common tags, created with Wordle.

Our most popular articles over the past year reflected a variety of our top interests: graduate school, spiritual formation, living as a Christian in the academy.

1. Where did you find your megaphone? (Janine Giordano)
2. Best Books for Undergrads: Your Picks
3. Amish Grace & Pop Culture (Tom Grosh)
4. Bobby Gross: Living the Christian Year (me)
5. Keys of Thriving (Not Just Surviving) (Tom)
6. ESN Interview: Alissa Wilkinson (me)
7. On Fitting In-With the Scholarship (Janine)
8. Best Books for Graduate Students?
9. Supreme Court Rules Against CLS (me)
10. What’s the Best Way to Help Haiti? (me)

Note: These are just the most popular posts that we’ve written this past year. A few posts (What’s the purpose of the university?, Why Get a PhD in the Humanities?, Wendell Berry on the University, and Eugene Peterson on Wendell Berry) are perennial favorites.

For the past academic year (July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010), here are a few stats about the ESN blog:

Tomorrow, I’ll be asking you what you think we ought to write about for the coming year. I look forward to hearing what you think!

Statement:  (Y)ou are great.  You are amazing!

Response:  No one has ever said that about me before.

Some lines from the short film Validation (16:23).  Have you watched it?  Some reflections below.

Read the rest of this entry »

To facilitate online conversation and follow-up conversation from Following Christ 2008, I’ve set up a new online discussion forum – forum.emergingscholars.org. It’s blank currently, but we hope you’ll join us there to continue the great conversations started at FC08 or on your campus.

One of the concerns that has been raised has been the public nature of online conversations.  I’ve heard from a few people that they have issues or questions that they would rather not have out in the open.  On the other hand, limited the accessibility of the forum creates a barrier to participation. So, I’d like to hear what you think.

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Do you have other thoughts about the forum?  Let me know, either by email or in the comments.

I hope you had a happy Thanksgiving. Mine was a bit abbreviated, as our two-year-old came down with a stomach virus and I had to stay home with her instead of joining the rest of the family. The worst part: not getting to debate the merits of the movie Once with my wife’s cousin’s husband. (For my take on the movie, see here.)

But today is going better. I just received via UPS the camcorders
that Tom Trevethan and I will be using at Following Christ 2008. We’ll be interviewing faculty and students about following Christ in the academy, for use next year on the ESN and Faculty Ministry websites.

Any suggestions about questions, topics, or interview subjects? If you had five minutes with an accomplished Christian faculty member, what would you ask them?

A new issue of the Emerging Scholars Review was sent out by email yesterday; articles from the issue will be appearing on the ESN website shortly. If you didn’t get your copy, but would like to, be sure to join ESN or update your membership with your current email address.

For our next issue, we’d like to celebrate ESN members who have recently accomplished something in their academic career: published an article or book, received a faculty appointment or tenure, completed a degree, etc. If that’s you, be sure to let me know. Include your name as you’d like it printed, your current university or position, and a description of your accomplishment.

In the upcoming Emerging Scholars Review (out this week, God willing), we’re going to feature a “best of the blog” article. What posts or comments should we include?

No, this isn’t a post about the cost of discipleship. It’s about finding ways to pay for your registration and travel to Following Christ 2008, InterVarsity’s conference for graduate students, faculty, professionals, and even ESN members.

Jon Boyd, FC08 conference director, has put together a helpful video describing the many ways you can reduce your out-of-pocket costs for FC08, including a way to win one of three $50 registration discounts, just for watching the video.

FC08: The Director’s Videos #6 from Graduate & Faculty Ministries on Vimeo.

BTW, you can see all of Jon’s FC08 videos (there are six and counting) here.

After a full day of presentation and conversation, I spied Books & Culture in the mail pile.  Before the house became too active for reflection, I tucked the new issue under my arm and ducked out of the kitchen to find a quiet spot for a first glance.  To my joy, I found Andy Crouch’s new book Culture-Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling received not only a full page back cover advertisement by InterVarsity Press, but also a glowing review by Gideon Strauss, Making It New: Andy Crouch proposes a different way for Christians to engage culture.  Here’s an excerpt :

Culture-Making Book Cover

Andy Crouch’s very fine Culture Making will be joining the short list of books that I read again and again, and fervently recommend to others, for insights into how we are to live as Christians. …

Culture Making is rich in provocations — for example, in its re-telling over several chapters of the overarching story found in the Christian Bible and the implications drawn from this re-telling, or in its critique of H. Richard Niebuhr’s Christ and Culture, or in its definition of cultural power as “the ability to successfully propose a new cultural good.” . . .

We are repeatedly tempted to use whatever cultural power we possess to move ourselves ever closer to further sources of power, to secure our own comfort and control over the world around us. The discipline of service takes us in the opposite direction, beyond comfort and control, and alongside relatively powerless people. Using the biblical examples of the Exodus and the Resurrection, Crouch argues that the discipline of service does not primarily entail using our power on behalf of the powerless but rather calls us to use our power alongside those who are less powerful, placing us in a relationship of partnership rather than in a relationship of asymmetrical charity.

If you’re not already convinced to dig into Culture-Making with a small group of friends this fall (note: click here for study guide information), then take a moment to read Strauss’ full review, listen to Crouch’s 2008 Graduate Faculty Ministry National Staff Meeting presentations (scroll down to the GRADUATE AND FACULTY MINISTRY section), and/or download the first several chapters.

Read the rest of this entry »

Welcome to the new Emerging Scholars Network blog!  We have created this blog as a supplement to the main ESN website, to direct you to useful resources for emerging Christian scholars around the web and to offer some “first thoughts” about issues affecting Christian scholars in the secular academy.

Some of the topics that we’ll cover will include:

• Advice for preparing for, flourishing in, and successfully leaving graduate school.
• Resources to connect you with like-minded scholars.
• New offerings (podcasts, books, web resources) from our ESN partners. (Note: I know that “partners” in web-speak too often means paid sponsors, but these partners are fellow Christian organizations that care about the life of the mind and the health of Christians in the academy.  If we link to something they offer, it will never be because they have paid us too.)
• Thoughts and discussions about topics that affect Christian scholars, such as the integration of faith, life, and learning, the role of Christianity in the secular academy, and such like.

I’ll be one of our main bloggers, and I’ll be joined at first by my colleague, Tom Grosh, who serves students and faculty in Pennsylvania. If you’d like to contribute to the discussion, please feel to comment or to take part in our discussion forums.  If you’re interested in contributing a guest post or suggesting we add your own blog to our blogroll, let me know.