The Emerging Scholars Blog

In our most recent Emerging Scholars Review, we told you about a new website connecting faculty and administrators to campuses of faith, AcademicVocations.org. Yesterday, they began a new offer: a weekly drawing for a $250 scholarship to the academic conference of your choice (including Following Christ 2008). Read the rest of this entry »

In addition to the Emerging Scholars Review, InterVarsity also publishes The Lamp Post, a quarterly email from Faculty Ministry. (If you have ever received or read the Faculty Ministry Newsletter, The Lamp Post is the new iteration of that publication.) It’s a great companion to the Emerging Scholars Review, as it features theological articles, reviews, and news specifically for Christian faculty.

A new edition of The Lamp Post will be published next week. If you’d like to subscribe (it’s free), click here.

While you’re at, you should also check out The Well, a publication of Women in the Academy and Professions. You can subscribe to that free email publication by clicking here.

ESN partner Mars Hill Audio has just released a new audiobook, The Passionate Intellect: Incarnational Humanism and the Future of University Education by Norman Klassen and Jens Zimmermann.

Here’s a quick description from MHA’s website:

Higher education long ago distanced itself from its originating Christocentric purposes. But today, the condition of Western universities is even more disordered. Institutions of higher education lack any common vision of what is true and what is good for human flourishing. The postmodern university is not only post-Christian, it is post-humanist, and for the same reasons. Humanism, after all, is the product of a culture that believed in the Incarnation.

In their book The Passionate Intellect, Norman Klassen and Jens Zimmermann argue that the Incarnation is after all the only reliable foundation on which to build a properly humanistic education. “Christians are supposed to be the paradigm for a new humanity founded by Christ and inaugurated by his resurrection from the dead, a decisive event signaling the reconciliation of humanity to God and anticipating the full redemption of God’s creation.” [emphasis added]

Hmm, where else have I recently seen the term “human flourishing?” This book looks very intriguing, and I encourage you to check it out. (And, if you’d like to contribute a review to the blog after you do, just let me know.)

The Christian Classics Ethereal Library is an incredible resource for theological and devotional classics. It specializes in free or low-cost public domain books. For example, don’t have $300 to plunk down for an entire edition of the Ante-Nicene, Nicene, and Post-Nicene Fathers? Download them from CCEL.

Today, I received notice that CCEL has obtained permission to publish Alvin Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief (Oxford, 2000). Here’s CCEL’s description of this highly regarded book:

Warranted Christian Belief is a philosophical defense of the reasonableness of belief in God and the great matters of the faith. It answers all the common objections how could a good God allow so much evil in the world? Isn’t belief in God is irrational because there isn’t enough evidence, or because it is only wish fulfillment? Doesn’t modern theology show that the traditional beliefs are false? How about postmodernism? You get the idea. These objections are answered in a way that is philosophically rigorous. The treatment is perhaps at a level appropriate for a college philosophy student rather than other professional philosophers.

Here is the full announcement. You can read the book online or download a plain text version for free, or download a PDF for $2.95.

Christianity Today has launched a new podcasting series featuring “editorials, news and books commentaries” (iTunes link). I just subscribed, and noticed that it looks like ESN partner Books & Culture will be featured regularly. There are already two podcasts with B&C editor John Wilson, discussing recent books by Rodney Stark and Christopher Buckley.

Personally, I enjoy listening to John Piper’s sermon podcasts and Mars Hill Audio’s Audition, as well as my guilty pleasure, ESPN’s BS Report with Bill Simmons. What are some of your favorite podcasts?

Here’s a good opportunity to help you finish your Ph.D.: The Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship. From their website:

The Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships are designed to encourage original and significant study of ethical or religious values in all fields of the humanities and social sciences, and particularly to help Ph.D. candidates in these fields complete their dissertation work in a timely manner. In addition to topics in religious studies or in ethics (philosophical or religious), dissertations appropriate to the Newcombe Fellowship competition might explore the ethical implications of foreign policy, the values influencing political decisions, the moral codes of other cultures, and religious or ethical issues reflected in history or literature.

Each one-year fellowship is worth $24,000, and you must be planning to submit your Ph.D. or Th.D. by summer 2010. The deadline is November 14, so you need to apply soon.

Link: Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation (HT: Gail Neal at Biola, via Stan Wallace)

This is a great opportunity for Christians pursuing graduate education. The Harvey Fellows, an initiative of the Mustard Seed Foundation, provides annual stipends of $16,000 (renewable for up to 3 years!) for Christians pursuing graduate education in fields in which Christians are underrepresented. (Note: they include “research, teaching, and administration at premier colleges and universities” as one of these fields, so most ESN members will qualify.) The Harvey Fellows also target students in programs that are recognized as among the “top five” in their discipline, and you can either be in or applying to a graduate program.

The deadline for this year’s application is November 1. Also, if you have an old application sitting in your file cabinet, the Harvey Fellows now require you to submit an on-line application, so visit their website to start the process.

There has been a one-time change in the intent to submit deadline for the Bosscher-Hammond Prizes, a juried competition being held in conjunction with Following Christ 2008. The deadline to submit the executive summary of your project is now October 15. As a reminder, here’s a quick summary of the Prizes:

The purpose of the Bosscher-Hammond Prize Competition is to encourage the integration of faith, learning, and practice — one of InterVarsity’s core values — and to demonstrate how the academic disciplines and professions can contribute to human flourishing.

There will 26 finalists awarded full registration to Following Christ 2008, and 3 winners will receive $2,000 each. For more information, visit the Bosscher-Hammond Prizes web page.

Hope I didn’t catch you (and me) at an awkward time, but are you already thirsting for encouragement in Sabbath-keeping this fall term?  As I reflected upon the topic and prayed for the graduate students and faculty with whom I minister, I returned to Calvin College’s helpful Sabbath-keeping resource page for faculty.  Below’s just a taste:

In an academic setting like Calvin where Monday signifies not only the beginning of a new week but the onslaught of classes to teach, tests to take (or give) and general all-around busyness, is it really realistic to rest from your work on Sunday? Is it even biblically mandated for the New Testament church?

In his book, Catch Your Breath: God’s Invitation to Sabbath Rest, Don Postema points out that that “the hectic pace of contemporary life makes the idea and practice of sabbath rest enormously attractive.” Yet this same hectic pace also, on the other hand, makes it incredibly difficult to slow down, let alone cease from the normal concerns of everyday life. In light of these considerations, two key questions must be answered: Why should Christians observe the Sabbath and how?

Two other links which come to mind when I consider the topic are given below.  What resources, practices, and communities have you found helpful in Sabbath-keeping, particularly as a new term begins?

1. A Guided Sabbath, a resource written by Sarah MacDonald & Jay Sivits for Following Christ in 2002
2. Critical Junctures: The Spiritual Formation of Graduate Students and Young Faculty by Bob Trube.

A free study guide for Andy Crouch’s Culture Making is now available from Andy’s website.

I, for one, will be taking part in a book discussion about Culture Making next month with a group of graduate students and faculty here in Greater Cincinnati. Check out Tom’s post about the book if you are curious about it.

Anyone else taking part in a discussion about the book? Or do you have other books you’d recommend for discussion?