The Emerging Scholars Blog

It’s for me!  Hard to believe that the feast of Books & Culture* enters 15 years of production.  The new issue has a time line on the cover and an accompanying podcast which I commend to you.

Out of curiosity …

Whether or not you regularly follow Books & Culture, which of the articles in the September/October 2010 sparks the greatest interest in reading, possibly discussing … Read the rest of this entry »

As part of my role with ESN, I sit on the InterVarsity Faculty Ministry Leadership Team (FMLT), made up of, well, these people. Each year, we read a book together that (we hope) gets at some aspect of our ministry to the university. Our book for this year was James Davison Hunter’s To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World.

If you’ve not read it yet, you should. Hunter, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, has produced a seminal book on cultural formation and change, particularly insightful on how Christians (primarily evangelical) have understood and misunderstood culture change over the past 40 years or so.

There’s much to discuss in this book — at times, it seemed like I was highlighting nearly every sentence — so I won’t try to summarize it or give a detailed review. For that, I encourage you strongly encourage you to read:

• Andy Crouch’s review of the book
• Christianity Today’s interview with Hunter
• Responses to Hunter by Crouch and Charles Colson on points where they feel Hunter errs (and Ray Pennings’ perspective on their debate)
• Byron Borger’s reflections at the Hearts & Minds Books blog
• An ongoing conversation about the book at FaithfulPresence.com

For my own remarks, I’ll limit them to two: the argument which I feel is Hunter’s most important, and what I think is the greatest weakness of the book. My observations come after the jump.

Have you read Hunter’s book? Do you agree or disagree with my points? What are your favorite parts of his argument? Read the rest of this entry »

What a blessing to have heard from Nathan Foster, Assistant Professor of Social Work, Spring Arbor University, Spring Arbor, MI, over the the past several weeks.  To wrap up the series I leave you with

• Belated “Happy Fathers Day!”
• Few quotes for inspiration
• Encouragement to pick up a copy of Wisdom Chaser: Finding My Father at 14,000 Feet (Nathan Foster. InterVarsity Press. 2010) for your summer vacation or reading group.

Much Loved Nothing

The implications of being loved just as I am are staggering.  It was becoming clear that if I really understood that I was loved by God, I would have no need for pride or the crushing desire for others approval.  Knowing I was loved was liberation from myself and from my silly ambitions.  I was becoming a little child, free to explore the world with zero to prove (p.58). …

I would not rise from this experience to fight another battle the same way.  The memory of this defeat would squelch my pride.  Instead of retreating to the old lies about myself, however, I opted to let the ideas I learned on Longs sink deep into by consciousness. Read the rest of this entry »

Returning to our series with Nathan Foster, Assistant Professor of Social Work, Spring Arbor University, Spring Arbor, MI.  As you may remember, the first post focused upon how a private person, such as Nathan, wrote such an open book about his life, struggles, family, and vocation.  In the second post, we explored becoming a wisdom chaser in higher education, strained family relationships, and discerning the call to higher education.

Today, we’ll consider

1. power in the classroom from the perspective of the teacher
2. taking the first steps in teaching
3. how InterVarsity Christian Fellowship can journey with academics

And in case you were wondering, Nathan’s keeping an eye on the series and would love to respond to your comments. So please, take advantage of the opportunity!

Thomas B. Grosh IV:  I heard Andy Crouch speak at Biblical Seminary on Playing God: Christian Reflections on the Use and Misuse of Power.  He spent a fair amount of time talking about the power he had being on stage behind a podium, with a microphone in a crowded room giving a presentation.  How do you deal with power in the classroom situation, as you refer to earlier, the students desire to come and learn from someone with the “answers?”  How do you use power creatively, “rightly”?

What a great topic for a presentation. That’s great that Andy acknowledged his power.  Sometimes I think we ignore the idea of us having power because it makes us uncomfortable, so we say we’re not powerful. But we’re extremely powerful in teaching, also in writing and speaking.  Not to mention the other social privileges our society rewards people based on gender, race, age, income and sexuality.  I’m a straight white male, the world is controlled by people similar to me, that gives me power.  So I would say acknowledge it’s there, acknowledge we have power.  Don’t deny it.  Power can be used for good, but we can’t use it for good if we’re denying it.  The way I use that in the classroom is realizing that I have the power to bless people, but I also have the power to destroy people. You remember this don’t you?  When we have a professor who criticizes us, it stings.  But, it’s also thought provoking.  Whether we realize it or not, comments that professors make hold a lot of power.  Here’s how I use it in social work.  I try and see students most of the time as better than they see themselves and intentionally call out their strengths.  If I see a student who has a lot of gifts and they’re unaware of it, I call that out.  “You have an incredible ability to do this or that.  Here are some things that you can work on.”  I wrote about this in the chapter on expectations [Chapter 13: “Rising and Falling to Assumptions”]. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week I began a Chasing Wisdom series based up my Skype interview with Nathan Foster, Assistant Professor of Social Work, Spring Arbor University, Spring Arbor, MI.  In the first post, I focused upon how a private person, such as Nathan, wrote such an open book about his life, struggles, family, and vocation.

Today, we’ll explore

1. becoming a wisdom chaser in higher education
2. discerning the call to higher education
3. being present to one’s family

Next week we’ll consider

1. power in the classroom from the perspective of the teacher
2. taking the first steps in teaching
3. how InterVarsity Christian Fellowship can journey with academics

And in case you were wondering, Nathan’s keeping an eye on the series and would love to respond to your comments. So please, take advantage of the opportunity!

Thomas B. Grosh IV:   What do academics chase? Is it wisdom?  Based on insights from your journey and that of your father’s, what would you say to encourage Emerging Scholars to become wisdom chasers?

Nathan Foster: Your question about education and wisdom is great. I worked at a place once and they didn’t like to hire people with advanced degrees.  And I said, “That’s crazy.  Why not?”  They thought [those with advanced degrees] become very arrogant and lost their ability to be teachable.  Don’t get me wrong education’s great and I’m a huge fan of it.  Personally I love to learn.  But it’s good for me to remember that there are potentially negative consequences from education.  We can get a little stuck up and we can lose some of our humility.  My wife calls it professoritis.  We tend to think that we’re right about things.  Now part of that comes from certain expectations.  When you’re teaching, people expect you to have the answers and they look to you to have the answers.  And so we get used to being right.  I’ve found it very seldom that students really challenge us on some of what we spout off.

I got a couple of good disciplines I try to practice to fight my professoritis. … Read the rest of this entry »

As I mentioned in Wisdom Chaser: Insights on Parent-Child Relationships, I found reading Wisdom Chaser: Finding My Father at 14,000 Feet (Nathan Foster. InterVarsity Press. 2010) to be a great blessing.  In follow-up, I contacted Nathan Foster (Assistant Professor of Social Work, Spring Arbor University, Spring Arbor, MI) to chat about some topics which I thought would be particularly applicable to members of the Emerging Scholars Network.

First we’ll explore how a private person, such as Nathan, wrote such an open book about his life, struggles, family, and vocation.  In coming weeks we’ll explore …

1. becoming a wisdom chaser in higher education
2. discerning the call to higher education
3. being present to one’s family
4. power in the classroom from the perspective of the teacher
5. taking the first steps in teaching
6. how InterVarsity Christian Fellowship can journey with academics

And in case you were wondering, Nathan is following the series and would love to respond to your comments. So please, take advantage of the opportunity!

Thomas B. Grosh IV:  How do you come to write something so personal?  Did you have a sense from the start that you’d be writing something like that or were you just keeping a journal and it became a book?  How does that happen?  How did writing a book about your journey up mountains with your father come to your mind?

Nathan Foster:  I always knew I wanted to write.  I was just waiting for the right project to come along.  It is probably no coincidence that when I write it tends to be very honest, somewhat raw.  That just personally fits me. Most things that I do, I try to have that flavor.  So that’s how my relationships go.  Some of that just stems back to

1. growing up and just wanting things to be honest and real.
2. being a counselor and therapist, where you’re dealing with real life stuff and you lose interest in playing games. Read the rest of this entry »

Tonight, as part of Biblical Seminary’s Conversations on Christianity & Culture lecture series, Andy Crouch speaks on Playing God: Christian Reflections on the Use and Misuse of Power. What are your thoughts on the topic? Any questions I should ask the author of Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling (InterVarsity Press, 2008), winner of Christianity Today’s 2009 Book Award for Christianity and Culture?  I’ll take some notes and share what he presents.

PS.  Culture Making is one of my Favorite book[s] on Christ and culture … Crouch provides an excellent springboard for conversation by the larger Evangelical community in his writing (book, blog, Christianity Today) and speaking.  Due to the variety of contexts for the conversation, it’s very hard to respond to Mike’s question inquiry for a favorite book.  In my life, some combination of the writing of Richard Mouw [He Shines in All That's Fair: Culture and Common Grace (Eerdmans, 2002), When the Kings Come Marching In: Isaiah and the New Jerusalem (Eerdmans, 2002 revised edition)] and Abraham Kuyper [Lectures on Calvinism (Princeton Theological Seminary, 1898) supplemented by Peter Heslam's Creating a Christian Worldview: Abraham Kuyper's Lectures on Calvinism (Eerdmans, 1998)] stimulated a larger perspective shaped by my education at Grove City College [See Must Reads for an American College Education?].  I’m feeling another post coming on and the PS being longer the original post.  Better stop now.  More later ;-)

When I returned from InterVarsity Christian Fellowship’s Graduate & Faculty Team Meetings, I found my family wanting me 24/7, at least for a few days ;-)  In my brief moments of spare time, I picked up Wisdom Chaser: Finding My Father at 14,000 Feet (Nathan Foster. InterVarsity Press. 2010).   In Wisdom Chaser, Nathan relates the story of his strained relationship with his famous father, i.e., Richard Foster, academic/teacher and author of several spiritual formation books including Celebration of Discipline.  The below excerpt kept me turning the pages to find out how father-son reconciliation occurred through mountain top experiences.

Wisdom Chaser Cover

As the years went by, it seemed I [Nathan] saw less and less of my father [Richard] and cared less and less about his absence.  At some point I shifted from wanting him to be home, counting down the days to when he would return, and eagerly greeting him at the airport, to not knowing when he was gone or home and caring even less.  As a child, I was proud of my dad.  Hearing him speak to crowds filled me with excitement; perhaps he would mention my name, or tell a story about me, or in some way acknowledge his home life.  At first I think I accepted that God was using my dad to help people.  Later I felt mildly ambivalent about the fact that God seemed to need my dad.  Somewhere along the way, my feelings shifted to embarrassment and anger that Dad had “holier work” to do.  By thirteen I was filled with rage, and I shut down. — Wisdom Chaser: Finding My Father at 14,000 Feet (Nathan Foster. InterVarsity Press. 2010, p.29).

As you may guess there is much more to the story, such as Richard’s experience as a youth with his family, writing habits, founding of Renovare’, slow pace of life/climb … and Nathan’s travels/thoughts through his teens & twenties.  Now I’m no Richard or Nathan Foster, but with regard to my own travels and intense focus upon various tasks for ministry in higher education, I found the book convicting.

First responses which I made in my house …

1. Included in our family’s dinner devotions the discipline of asking each member of the family the best/worst part of the day
2. Began reading Gary Schmidt’s retelling of Pilgrims Progress (Eerdmans Press, 2008) chapter by chapter with the twins before bedtime … seeking to reinstate our sporadic bedtime readings.
3. Declined a ministry invitation to preserve a time with family during a stretched summer.
4. Cleared time to celebrate my wife Theresa’s birthday (May 6) and fully attend to the family while she runs Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure (Pittsburgh, PA) with her mom.

First response with the Emerging Scholars Network …

Writing this post, which took much longer than I thought it would.  Why?  Much to talk about with regard to parent-child relationships and higher education (topic of some future posts).  And because I  took the time to soak in the great video of a recent conversation between Nathan and his father at Spring Arbor University, Spring Arbor, MI. Why was the conversation at Spring Arbor?  Because Nathan’s on faculty as an Assistant Professor of Social Work!  Refreshing material.  I’d encourage you to check out the clips, maybe show them as part of a campus discussion group and pass them along to others whom you think would find them of interest.

PS.  Not only has Nathan not given up on following Christ, getting to know his father, serving in higher education, but also he’s not given up on becoming a father himself.  Nathan’s married and has two children of his own.

PPS.  InterVarsity Press has an excellent Question-Answer author interview (text) posted here.

Film depicting Nickel Mines shootings questioned (Cindy Stauffer, Lancaster Intelligencer Journal, 03/01/2010) ran on frontpage in south central PA the day after Donald Kraybill, one of the authors of Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy, spoke for the Emerging Scholars Network in partnership with Elizabethtown Brethren in Christ. If you’re interested in learning more about the Amish, I’d encourage you to

• listen to Kraybill’s 2/28/2010 presentation on The Riddle of the Amish (the audio begins with my brief introduction of Kraybill).
• pick-up a copy of Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy — coming out in paperback later this month.  Note:  the Amish Grace web site is a rich resource and All author royalties are going to Mennonite Central Committee for their ministries to children.
• visit the Amish Studies web site — maintained by the Young Center for Anabaptist & Pietist Studies, Elizabethtown College

How should followers of Christ respond to this popular culture depiction of the Gospel, academic research, and a minority group which desires as a people of God to be separate from popular culture.

Should we

• contend that certain forms of media can never do justice to events/material such as what is found in Amish Grace: How Forgiveness Transcended Tragedy
• post comments on the film’s website and other locations which encourage dialogue
• stand up against what appears to be a misuse of film rights to the title of a well researched book, it’s content, and those whom it represents
• turn the other cheek by neither entering the public fray nor watching the film
• watch/discuss the film
• watch/discuss the film only after we’ve read up on the Amish or are led in consideration of the film by someone who can provide insights regarding the Amish
• seek to produce more films/documentaries closer to the facts/truth, e.g.,
  The Amish: Back Roads to Heaven (which ends with a brief summary on the Nickel Mines tragedy), The Amish: How They Survive, The Amish: A People of Preservation
• other?

Note: Lifetime‘s website for the upcoming film is here and the trailer can be found here.

PS.  ESN’s Week-in-Review will hit the web on Saturday morning.

What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. If you have items you’d like us to consider for the top five, add them in the comments or send them to Tom or Mike.

1. Alan Jacobs’ Grad School Thoughts: Should you go to grad school? “Probably not,” writes Alan Jacobs, Wheaton English professor and author of Original Sin, The Narnian, A Theology of Reading, and many other excellent things.  But if you insist, he’s got some good advice. (Also check out Alan’s contribution to our ESN article, “Why Get a PhD in the Humanities?”)

2.  James K. A. Smith’s Desiring the Kingdom ties for OUR MOST AUDACIOUS CLAIM: THE MOST IMPORTANT BOOK OF THE YEAR with Matthew Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft:  An Inquiry Into the Value of Work in Best Books of 2009 Part I by Byron Borger of Hearts and Minds Bookstore.  Take a few minutes to review the list, keep an eye out for two more parts going up next week, and let us know what books you’re interested in discussing this year.

3.  In The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in the American University (W.W. Norton, 2010), Louis “Menand asks four questions: Why is it so hard to create a general-education curriculum? Why have the humanities undergone a crisis of legitimacy? Why has ‘interdisciplinarity’ been seen—and ultimately failed—as a magic wand? Why do professors share the same politics?” — Oxygenating Academe: The Unpublic Intellectual (By Karen J. Winkler, Chronicle of Higher Education, January 10, 2010)

4.  ‘Baby Einstein’ Founder Goes to Court (By Tamar Lewin, NY Times, January 12, 2010):  Raises the question of access to and reproducibility of research in relationship to marketing and consumer concerns.  Do you know anyone who watched or advocated Baby Einstein?

5. Proof (or at least Evidence) That Mentoring Matters (by Scott Jaschik, Inside Higher Ed): A study presented the American Economic Association’s annual meeting found that mentoring had a significant impact on the number of grants and publications for female economists.