The Emerging Scholars Blog

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.

While posting Colleges ignore life’s biggest questions, I was reminded of Neil Postman’s The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School – a book which I believe after a dozen years still remains a must read for those involved in education.  In my review of The End of Education, I conclude:

The End of Education Book Cover

Postman’s The End of Education provides an excellent critique of the current approach to schooling and education, but fails to assert a compelling alternative for the follower of Christ. In the end, a sense of the divine underlies our theories of education and makes religiously neutral education impossible. Contrary to Postman, we should not seek to create our own broad narrative or return to the American Experiment, but instead boldly explore our place in the narrative of the God who is there and is not silent.

If you’re interested in reading my full review, click here. Anyone have thoughts on Postman’s book or the general topic of The End of Education which they’d like to get out onto the table?

Note:  If you’re unfamiliar with Neil Postman (1931-2003), University Professor, Paulette Goddard Chair of Media Ecology, and Chair of the Department of Culture and Communication at New York University, visit the Random House author spotlight which includes links to a number of his titles.  Personally, I found Technopoly:  The Surrender of Culture to Technology hard to put down.

Last fall Anthony Kronman, Sterling Professor of Law at Yale, kicked off the academic year with a Boston Globe op-ed entitled Why are we here? Colleges ignore life’s biggest questions, and we all pay the price.  In response, Comment hosted an excellent on-line mini-symposium with several scholars including Steven Garber (Director, Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation and Culture), Dr. James K. A. Smith (Associate Professor of Philosophy, Calvin College), and Greg Veltman (Ph.D. Student, University of Pittsburgh).  As you enter the new term and consider the role of higher education, take some time to read and briefly respond to these short pieces and Kronman’s response. …

To whet your appetite, below’s part of Dr. James K. A. Smith’s response to Why are we here? Colleges ignore life’s biggest questions, and we all pay the price:

While I think his diagnosis of the commodification of knowledge in University, Inc. is right on the money; and while I’m all for a more robust role for the humanities in a university education; and while I’m downright enthusiastic about a university education that actually grapples with “the big questions” about what it means to be human and what it looks like to live “the good life” — the fact is Kronman’s lament points out the need for so much more than he proposes. What’s needed is for the university to recover an understanding of education as formation.

But Kronman’s liberalism won’t let him imagine that. In order for education to be formative — in order for education to actually mold and shape students into certain kinds of people who are primed to live out a vision of the good life — such education needs to be shaped by a story, grounded by a tradition, and oriented toward a particular vision of the Good. But that would entail a violation of cherished liberal principles of the modern university — the stories it tells itself about its alleged neutrality, its supposed tolerant largesse, and its respect for human autonomy and self-determination. This is why he demonizes a “religious” education as the worst possible threat. So Kronman really just imagines a liberal, modern bastardization of a formative education: a syllabus that “raises the big questions,” but then leaves the sophomore in the place of lord and master, free to make her own decisions about the good life. (In this respect, his pedagogical memory is selective: the rich tradition of education that he points toward was not just unabashedly formative. It was, at times, positively dogmatic!) — Dr. James K.A. Smith, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Calvin College.

Note: Anthony Kronman’s Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life was released last September by Yale University Press.

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.

Read the rest of this entry »