The Emerging Scholars Blog

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.  How hard can an adjunct push? Would reading a piece such as Six Ways to Make Adjuncting More Effective and Fulfilling (Brian Croxall. Chronicle of Higher Education. 7/15/2010) been helpful for Kenneth Howell, who up until recently had an adjunct position at U. of Illinois where he was teaching about his Roman Catholic faith?  Check out how Teaching or Preaching (Scott Jaschik. Inside Higher Ed. 7/15/2010) and The Politics Of The Classroom: Is It Homophobic To Teach About The Scriptural Basis For Homophobia? (Tenured Radical.  7/13/2010), discuss Howell’s firing.   While reading, don’t miss how our guest blogger Janine Giordano Drake (advanced graduate student in the University of Illinois Department of History) enters the conversation with the Tenured Radical.  Note:  the Alliance Defense Fund has picked up Howell’s cause.

2. The Real Challenge for Higher Education. Do you think higher education receives significant challenge from the wider American culture.  If so, Why?  How would you (do you) seek to address concerns and implement change in your context?

To better understand America’s lack of a pervasive education culture, consider the fact that as a nation we generally don’t greatly value educated people and don’t seem to believe that being educated contributes to quality of life beyond that offered by greater economic success. — Garrison Walters. The Real Challenge for Higher Education. Inside Higher Ed. 7/15/2010.

3.  How Diversity Punishes Asians, Poor Whites and Lots of Others (Russell K. Nieli. Minding the Campus: Reforming the Universities. 7/12/2010). HT:  David.  He comments, “Later down in the particle they talk about how universities actually count points against students who come from farming (i.e. poor white) backgrounds, taking off points for 4H, FFA, etc.”

4. More on Miracles: Over at Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed blog, regular blogger and university scientist RJS picks up on the same BioLogos’ series on miracles that Tom wrote about.

If miracles are arbitrary acts of imaginative supernatural showmanship the incredulity of Martin is understandable. But they are not.  And this connects with the essay by Pete Enns, looking at the incidents in the ministry of Jesus where he rebuked or calmed the sea. These were not arbitrary acts, magic tricks, or acts of convenience to make life easier. These were miracles with a purpose – where the impact could not be missed.

5. Improv for Change: Evangelical Christians have tried every other strategy for changing culture, so why not improvisational comedy? In the WSJ, Penn law professor David Skeel writes about an unusual training session – Veritas Riff – organized by some pretty big names in the next generation of evangelical leaders: Curtis Chang, Andy Crouch, Michael Lindsey, and Dan Cho of the Veritas Forum, who sponsored the event. Last month in Cambridge, MA, a small group of “evangelical thought-leaders” were trained in media relations, interviewing, and, yes, improv:

Then came our theatrical training, led by Marianne Savell, the director of Actors Co-op Theatre Company in Hollywood. It started tamely enough, with a game called zip-zap-zop. (One fellow pointed to another and said “zip,” the other pointed to a third and said “zap;” those who spoke before pointing or said the wrong word were ousted from the circle).

Sounds like fun! This being the 21st century, you can see a Flickr collection of photos from the Veritas Riff mini-conference.

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 »

Andy Crouch in class, but happy

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 ;-)

John Sommerville at the Midwest Faculty Conference

Two weeks ago, I was at InterVarsity’s Cedar Campus for our 2009 Midwest Faculty Conference. John Sommerville, professor emeritus of history at U. Florida and author of The Decline of the Secular University, was the featured speaker. He spoke about the influence of secularism on the ideas and structures of the university (as he has previously written in the Chronicle), but also discussed new opportunities for Christian scholars in a “postsecular” university.

The third of his four talks addressed a key question: How can Christians change our universities? We’ll be posting the complete talk in the near future, but I wanted to highlight one suggestion that Sommerville made, explicitly borrowing an idea from Andy Crouch’s Culture Making: The only way to change culture is to create more of it.

Specfically, Sommerville thinks that Christian academics ought to be creating new symbols within their discipline and for the university as a whole. While he thinks that new concepts and new ideas are important and necessary, these are far more rare and, really, outside the realm of possibility for most of us.  Symbols, however, are powerful conveyors of ideas that frame the thinking of both academics and the general public. Read the rest of this entry »

Last weekend, my fellow blogger Tom Grosh launched the Central Pennsylvania Christian Scholars Network with an event called “Culture Making on Our Campuses,” featuring Andy Crouch, author of Culture Making: Recovering Our Creative Calling. (Here‘s more about the book from Tom himself.) Over 70 people attended, and it sounds like it was a wonderful beginning to a new community of Christian students, faculty, and scholars.

Tom has written up a complete recap of the event that we’ll be publishing in this month’s Emerging Scholars Review (join ESN to get this quarterly email delivered to your inbox).  In the meantime, Byron Borger of the terrific Hearts & Minds Bookstore has written up his own take on the event. Enjoy!