Emerging Scholars Blog

InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network

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Book Review: Erasmus and the Age of Reformation, by Johan Huizinga

Erasmus and the Age of Reformation by Johan Huizinga.
Erasmus and the Age of Reformation by Johan Huizinga.

Erasmus and the Age of Reformation, Johan Huizinga, tr. F. Hopman. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1957 (first published in 1924). Link is to Dover Publications reprint. This book is now in the public domain and there are free versions for Kindle and other digital formats.

Summary: An elegantly written biography of Desiderius Erasmus describing his life, thought and character as a scholar who hoped to awaken “good learning” and to bring about a purified Catholic church, and the tensions resulting from being caught between Reformers and Catholic hierarchy.

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Bible-Believing Biblical Scholar, Part 2: Integrating Christian Faith and Biblical Scholarship (Scholar’s Compass)

illuminated manuscript photo
Photo by Jocey K

“Let not many of you become teachers, my brothers and sisters, knowing that we will experience greater condemnation. For we all stumble in many ways.” (James 3:1-2a my translation).

Reflection

In James 3:1-2a, James gives a warning to those who are or would be teachers. One should be careful because teachers will be held to a stricter standard. As I teach biblical studies, I take this passage very seriously. James has in mind teachers within a church setting. The role of teacher, mentioned in Acts 13:1 alongside that of prophet, would have been a role that brought honor socially, much as being a professor in most disciplines does today. Apparently people, both fit and unfit, sought the role of teacher. James elaborates on the primary issue for teachers in James 3:2b-12: the tongue. Teachers have significant influence through what they say. There are at least two spheres in which this warning from James is important to me: the church and the classroom. [Read more…] about Bible-Believing Biblical Scholar, Part 2: Integrating Christian Faith and Biblical Scholarship (Scholar’s Compass)

In God We Trust: A July 4th Conversation on the Historian’s Vocation & the Church

Gilbert Stuart’s “George Washington Unfinished: 1796.”

The assistant rector at Christ Church in Philadelphia, the Reverend James Abercrombie, once preached a vehement sermon protesting the “unhappy tendency of…those in elevated stations who invariably turned their backs upon the celebration of the Lord’s Supper.” Though Abercrombie did not name names, then President George Washington, who was in attendance that day, took the message to be aimed directly at him and thought it “a very just reproof.” Washington’s custom had long been to excuse himself from church when it came time to partake of the sacraments and he now realized that by so doing he had deeply offended his fellow congregants. Thus, Washington resolved from then on to skip church altogether on Sacrament Sundays (Holmes, pp. 63-4).

So, no, George Washington was not an orthodox Christian in any conventional or historic sense. Though he never went so far as to take scissors to the Bible the way Thomas Jefferson did, his faith was clearly a predictable sort of Deism with no room for the miraculous, much less the sacramental. In his letters to churches, for instance, he wrote in typical Deist-speak, variously referring to “Providence,” “the Deity,” “the Grand Architect,” and the like, but never to, say, the divinity of Jesus or the Holy Spirit.

Similarly, James Madison abandoned orthodox Christianity for Deism while in his twenties and John Adams was a Unitarian (bordering on Deism) who denied the existence of the Trinity and the divinity of Christ. There were, of course, sincere orthodox Christians among the Founding Fathers, like Patrick Henry (who, it should be remembered, sharply opposed ratifying the Constitution) and Samuel Adams (who historically was much better at brewing trouble than beer). But orthodox Christians were by no means either the most numerous or the most prominent members of the Founders. [Read more…] about In God We Trust: A July 4th Conversation on the Historian’s Vocation & the Church

The Well: How open are you about your faith?

You don’t have to go to this extent to be open about your faith on campus.

I’ve mentioned The Well here on the blog before — it’s a terrific resource put together by our colleagues with InterVarsity’s Women in the Academy and Professions. While their focus is, well, women in the academy and professions, anyone interested in the navigating the intersection between Christianity and the academy ought to be reading The Well.

One of their regular features is Dear Mentor, which poses a question to several experienced mentors from academia and the professional world. This month’s The Well email included a Dear Mentor column that raised a question we’ve dealt on several occasions: how open should you be about your faith? [Read more…] about The Well: How open are you about your faith?

Finding Community at Christian Academic Conferences

I included a bit about this in Friday’s Week in Review, but I wanted to give the topic its own post. Last week, I attended the 2010 Stone-Campbell Conference, an annual academic conference for colleges affiliated with the Stone-Campbell/Restoration Movement – Churches of Christ, Christian Churches, Disciples of Christ. It’s organized by William Baker at Cincinnati Christian University, and several people had recommended that I make a connection with the event. I’m glad I did.

I was struck by a few things:

  • There was some very good content being presented.
  • There were lots of Christian scholars, at every career stage: tenured faculty, tenure-track, adjunct, graduate student, even a sizable contingent of undergraduates.
  • Out of a few hundred attendees, I met only one person from a secular university.

Part of it, I’m sure, was the marketing and the subject matter. Most of the papers presented dealt with some aspect of theology, Biblical studies, church history, etc., and many of them were quite specific to the Stone-Campbell Movement. Still, there were enough interdisciplinary or generalist papers that I think most academics would have been able to find something of interest – if, that is, you weren’t interested enough in building relationships with Christian academics committed to their faith and scholarship. I’m not sure that I would recommend traveling across the country to attend if it didn’t fit your subject matter, but for someone local, it would be well worth the price (I think I only paid $30 to register). I’d be willing to bet that there are lots of denominational conferences like this around the country.

So, my questions:

    • Have you attended a Christian academic conference like this one?
    • Did you find it to be a worthwhile experience, assuming that you weren’t attending for professional reasons?
    • Would you recommend it to other “secular” scholars?