I was busy last week writing a sermon and Pietist Option talk (more on those tomorrow) and so didn’t have a chance to blog about the latest fracas involving Liberty University and its controversial president, Jerry Falwell, Jr. A quick recap: • On Friday Jack Jenkins of Religion News Service reported that Liberty officials were eliminating its common … More What Counts as a Christian College or University?
If you want to feel sick to your stomach about this country’s largest Christian university, make time to read Alec MacGillis’ article on Liberty University for ProPublica. It’s not just that you’ll be reminded of Liberty president Jerry Falwell, Jr.’s alliance with Donald Trump and the damage it has done to the word “evangelical.” It’s the … More Falwell: “The big victory was finding a way to tame the faculty”
The Bethel community lost one of its most brilliant members this week. Adam Johnson, a neuroscientist who taught in our Psychology department, had first been diagnosed with cancer in 2010. After initial treatment, doctors discovered more tumors and told him his condition was terminal. Six years later, Adam finally died on Tuesday morning. In Bethel’s … More RIP Adam Johnson
“There is a free speech crisis on campus,” wrote Sarah Jones yesterday for The New Republic, “but it’s not at Yale or Middlebury. It’s at Liberty University and schools like it.” In other words, the true threat to free speech in higher education does not come from leftist students and professors trying to stifle conservative voices, but … More Is There a Free Speech Crisis at Christian Colleges?
I know, there are a lot of ways you could fill in that sentence to make it a joke. But in seriousness, it’s struck me in the last few years that the rarest thing in higher education is a truly distinctive academic program. At least among four-year, residential, non-profit universities that lay any claim to … More The Rarest Thing in Higher Education Is…
Dear madam or sir, I write in hope that you exist. Honestly, it’s hard for me to imagine that there are individuals in this or any society who have the ability to donate $75 million to their favorite good cause. (Subtract a few zeroes and I’d still need to battle my budget a bit.) But … More An Open Letter to Anyone with $75 Million to Give to Christian Colleges
In the past year, I’ve noticed an intriguing micro-trend among History majors at Bethel: in the space of a year, three of them expressed an interest in pairing a History major with preparation for med school. (And one of my teaching assistants has added History to his Biokinetics major in our Applied Health Science department.) … More Major in History, Go to Med School
A couple times in the past twelve months I’ve praised From Bubble to Bridge: Educating Christians for a Multifaith World, by my Bethel University colleagues Marion Larson and Sara Shady. Before it came out in January, I called it “the first must-read Christian book of 2017,” and quoted the foreword by interfaith activist Eboo Patel: From … More Including Evangelical Students in Interfaith Work
Thanks to David Congdon for pointing out that The Chronicle of Higher Ed recently published a list of the most popular majors at America’s forty largest public universities. (subscription required, but you can see a picture of the table on David’s Twitter account) If I missed it, it’s probably because I didn’t want to see a result that I … More The (Potential) Problems with Majoring in Business
I originally delivered this address (which pulls together several ideas I’ve chewed on at this blog) last spring and published it at The Anxious Bench. But it struck me last night that it’s actually better-suited to this time of year, when many of us are welcoming new students who may not understand or value the liberal … More The Three Journeys of the Christian Liberal Arts
The Pietist Schoolman 