InterVarsity's Emerging Scholars Network
Your thoughts, emotions, and responsible actions will not be simple, because you do not face simplicity. We face complexity. And God is asking you to exercise discernment as you follow him into responsible action as we face this moment in our nation.Read more…
Last summer I was given the opportunity to teach my first college-level class: a senior-level lecture course on the history of the American Civil War and Reconstruction. I frankly wasn’t that nervous and I went into the course thinking that my job consisted of a simple two-step process where I simply downloaded information into my students’ brains and then challenged them to think critically about the past and its connection to the present. Read more…
Going into the Summer of 2016, I expected to be working my regular low-pressure desk job back home. Instead, God had other plans.Read more…
Summary: This text explores the interwoven story of religion, race, and politics in American history, with a concluding theological reflection.Read more…
Summary: This is a survey and critique of the major philosophers and theologians of the West beginning with the Greek philosophers and early church fathers up to the present day, written from a reformed perspective.Read more…
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…
Can individuals seeking to live faithfully to their calling change history? These profiles of eight British believers demonstrate that “mere believers” can indeed have a transformative influence in matters both of the heart and of the intellect.Read more…
“Ours is a present-tense society,” historian Robert Tracy McKenzie notes, “We live in a time and place in which thinking deeply about the past is a countercultural and even a radical act.” Read more…
There is a huge cultural gap between the church and the university, and we are called to bridge it. Frankly, I have never felt completely home in either world. While my university friends need to learn to see nuance and diversity in the Christian tradition, those in the church have much to learn from the university. During our time at the University of Florida my wife and I collaborated with a local Christian Study Center to try to bridge these two worlds. We sponsored speakers who lectured both in a professional setting at the university and also to local church audiences.Read more…
John Fea (Chair, Dept of History, Messiah College) on Malice Toward None; Charity for All and Was America Founded as a Christian Nation? as part of ESN Local: Christian Scholar Series (Elizabethtown Brethren in Christ Church).Read more…
To offer an inside scoop to Emerging Scholars, I asked Marc a few questions regarding the inspiration, format, and intended purposes of Mere Believers. Read more…
Earlier this week in Engaging Society, I shared some of the vision for the Emerging Scholars Network Blog in 2014. To take this another step, below is an exploration of God’s sovereign work through historical eras and the call thatRead more…
Working in university ministry with grad students, I am often asked the question of just how this thing of integration of faith and learning is supposed to work. Mark Noll‘s Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind (Eerdmans, 2011) isRead more…
How do we research, embrace, and live in proper relationship to the “real story” of those who have gone before us?Read more…
So, Wen, given the prevalence of the whole “Christian America” ideology in American churches today, what has been your experience in the church as a historian of American religion? How do you navigate conversations about America’s history in church? Read more…
What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. If you have items you’d like us to consider for theRead more…
This is the first of four guest posts from Janine Giordano, a graduate student and ESN member from the University of Illinois, on the topic of cultivating your voice and finding your audience while in graduate school. When she isRead more…
What are you reading, watching, thinking about this week? As usual, here’s a few which have been on our mind. Let us know your thoughts on any/all of them. If you have items you’d like us to consider for theRead more…
New from Zondervan, A Faith and Culture Devotional seems custom-made for ESN members. Edited by Kelly Monroe Kullberg (of the Veritas Forum, Finding God at Harvard, Finding God Beyond Harvard, and, most recently, InterVarsity’s Women in the Academy and Professions)Read more…