Scholar’s Call: The Joy of Becoming a Generalist

Mar 7, 2016By

The first day of the fall semester of my senior undergraduate year, I ran into a friend of mine, a fellow history major, outside of the student union building at the research university we attended. We stopped and talked for a bit, updating each other on our lives and comparing our fall schedules. My friend had just been to the university bookstore, and he showed me a textbook he had just bought for a History of the Old South class that the history department was offering that fall.Read more…

Mar 7, 2016 0 Comments

Harper Lee and the Unintended Prescience of Go Set a Watchman

Oct 16, 2015By

Last February, HarperCollins announced that it was going to publish this long-forgotten work by Lee, the Alabamian who put away her typewriter and spent decades fending off pesky questions about her abortive writing career after she was overwhelmed by the phenomenal success of To Kill a Mockingbird more than fifty years ago.Read more…

Oct 16, 2015 1 comment

Surely the Lord Was in the Rare Books Room, Part 2 (Scholar’s Compass)

Jun 28, 2015By

Christians in university settings can all too often find in the church and in academe two cultures that lead us to discouragement. The most uptight Pharisees can miss Christ just as easily as the most ardent skeptics by failing to see the God that they have misdefined in the first place. Read more…

Jun 28, 2015 0 Comments

“Blessed Are the Successful?” (Scholar’s Compass)

Feb 10, 2015By

A lot of Christian high school and college students across the nation fret over what God wants them to do with their lives. The older I get, the more tempted I am to say to the worriers that God wants them to go to bed and get a good night’s sleep. Political theorist Bryan T. McGraw does not reach quite that extreme a conclusion in his essay “Seeing What’s Around: Vision and Vocation.”Read more…

Feb 10, 2015 5 comments