The Emerging Scholars Blog

One form of Christian presence on campus.

A few different strands of thought came together for me this morning in the form of a question. Let me throw out the question first, and then elaborate.

Is there a public Christian intellectual presence on your campus?

Here are the threads that came together for me. First, in our recent book discussion of John Stott’s Your Mind Matters, Stott describes a kind of intellectualism that is very public. For example, in chapter 3, he “examines six spheres of Christian living, each of which is impossible without the proper use of the mind”: worship, faith, holiness, guidance, evangelism, and ministry. These have internal and private aspects, but also external, public aspects. I’d be willing to bet that, on your campus, there are at least two or three of these which are very public indeed. Picture the sidewalk evangelists who roam through each year, or campus ministry student outreach events. On some campuses, worship or holiness might have similar public aspects.

Image credit: falonyates via Flickr.

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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 »

Would you agree or disagree with me that Christianity* is unfashionable on campus?  If so, would you go further with me to argue that Christianity is even more unfashionable on campus than in our larger culture?  Whether you agree or disagree with me that Christianity is unfashionable on campus, does Christianity need to be unfashionable on campus?  And if so, why and how? Read the rest of this entry »

After last night’s launch event, BioLogos is up and running full steam.   As a member of the academic community, what are your thoughts on the BioLogos Foundation?  Can BioLogos accomplish it’s ambitious agenda or at least move the conversation closer to where it should be (see below)?  Are there particular resources, events, and discussions at BioLogos which impress you or stirr interest in dialogue?  BTW, come back tomorrow.  I have some thoughts  to share regarding … (well you’ll just have to wait)

The BioLogos Foundation promotes the search for truth in both the natural and spiritual realms, and seeks to harmonize these different perspectives.

Dr. Francis Collins established The BioLogos Foundation to engage America’s escalating culture war between science and faith. 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!

Are to-do lists a helpful tool to getting things done? Or do you find them frustratingly long and seemingly insurmountable? Or do you find them buried under papers or in old documents/post-it notes on your screen, wall, door?  Or do you somehow ignore to-do lists entirely?

Thanks to Andy Crouch’s 5 Questions post on to-do lists, I’ve had quite a few good conversations with friends and family on this topic. Two pastors of my local congregation have given some interesting feedback on the topic.  One quipped that he finds to-do lists helpful in his search for significance, i.e., when he crosses items off his list he feels like he’s accomplished something. He confesses to sometimes adding items to be crossed off … I’ve heard this from some other people ;-)  Another pastor noted the cultural rootedness of to-do lists:  

In our culture, almost everyone has multiple things to manage, most not by choice but by necessity in our complex, multi-faceted world – more than can conveniently be remembered.  Thus the need for external support mechanisms.

What are you thoughts? In what manner are to-do lists vital to the scholar. Does this vary from field to field and the level of one’s responsibility? What tools do you use to manage and prioritize items on to-do lists? Is this cultural artifact unique and/or over-used in the United States (or Western Civilization)?

Maybe this should be the topic for Chapter 2 of Up to the Minute Publishing ;-)

As you have a passion for higher education, you no doubt follow March Madness with great interest and/or concern.  So join me in swinging by Culture Making to wrestle with the 5 Culture Making Questions applied to March Madness:

1. What does March Madness assume about the way the world is?
2. What does March Madness assume about the way the world should be?
3. What does March Madness make possible?
4. What does March Madness make impossible (or at least a lot more difficult)?
5. What new culture is created in response?

But before you go, what do you think about the promise by Courtney Paris, an all-American center at the University of Oklahoma, to repay the cost of her scholarship if she does not bring the national championship back to her campus? –  Putting a Price on a Title Run Stirs a Debate, by Jere’ Longman, NY Times, 3/23/09.

Is that what investment in athletic scholarships are understood to mean?  Is it too romantic to consider college athletic scholarships as an opportunity to enter and receive the long term value of higher education?  

With regard to financial investment and visibility, star athletes seem to be in a unique situation.  I don’t think a similar promise to produce results or repay (publish or perish, win the Nobel Prize, etc) could be given by those who receive a full ride academic scholarship, grant money, or a named academic chair.

Take a moment sometime today to consider The Real St. Patrick and invite others to do likewise.  Looking for some resources?  I’d encourage you to start with The Real St. Patrick and St. Patrick’s Day.  If you have additional suggestions, including books to recommend, please share below.

St. Patrick

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of every man who speaks of me,
Christ in the eye that sees me,
Christ in the ear that hears me.

I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through a belief in the Threeness,
Through a confession of the Oneness
Of the Creator of creation.

– A Poem by St. Patrick, ca 377 AD

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What does Nicholas Wolterstorff make of Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman (Yale University Press, 2008)?

About half-way through the review, Wolterstorff critiques Sennett’s advocacy of animal laborans’ (i.e., the laboring human being, who asks How?) ability to function separate from homo faber (i.e., the human being who asks Why? and assumes the role of guide/critic to animal laborans) or at least a conversation in community regarding the ethics of particular crafts.   In particular, Wolterstorff uses Sennett’s treatment of Robert Oppenheimer’s craftsmanship of the atomic bomb  to question whether the worker focused on producing excellent goods for their own sake will ask the question whether the good/product should be created/manufactured at all.  Wolterstorff wraps up by asserting that Sennett’s pragmatism lacks the strength to properly support his incomplete definition of craftsmanship, which finds difficulty in extending into more expansive areas such as proper/good goverance (a significant concern of Hannah Arendt, whose put down of  animal laborans served as a motivation for book): Read the rest of this entry »

Books and Culture March/April 2009

In the March/April edition of Books & Culture:  A Christian Review, Nicholas Wolterstorff’s review of Richard Sennett’s The Craftsman (Yale University Press, 2008) raises concerns of particular relevance to Emerging Scholars.

First, Wolterstorff digs into Sennett’s critique of the lower status given to animal laborans (i.e., the laboring human being, who asks How?) in relationship to homo faber (i.e., the human being who asks Why? and assumes the role of guide/critic to animal laborans).  Some quotes from The Craftsman which particularly resonate with Wolterstorff include:

Thinking and feeling are contained within the process of making. … Western civilization has had a deep-rooted trouble in making connections between head and hand, in recognizing and encouraging the impulse of craftsmanship. — from Thinking with Your Hands, by Nicholas Wolterstorff, Books & Culture:  A Christian Review, March/April 2009, p.30. Read the rest of this entry »