The Emerging Scholars Blog

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.

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.

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