University students are shaped by more than just their chosen program: there are other, more invisible forces that shape their lives for good or ill. In a previous blog I explained the overt, phantom, and null curriculums of a university. Here I explain the electronic, hidden, and concomitant curriculums that make up every student’s learning career. … More Choosing Your University: Part II
The university years are critical: critical to your profession, to your friendships and probable marriage, and to your likely geographic commitments. Realize that universities shape you in their image, narrative, and priorities. They get to your heart, and they offer you a dream. Unfortunately, much of the curriculum is invisible… … More Should I Enrol at a Public or Christian University? A Guide to the Invisible Curricula (Part 1)
In a world that champions STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) his guest blog from Dr. Deborah Bowen argues for the perennial value of the Humanities for understanding others, ourselves, and the world which leaders hope to change for the better… … More Why Bother with the Humanities in a Time of Global Crisis?
Is the majority world on the wrong side of history when it comes to sexual ethics? Where harsh laws exist criminalizing homosexual acts, it seems to be true. But Western arrogance in declaring the direction of history could be seen as the vestiges of colonialism. What about the church? Who is having their ethics sullied by their social context? Here I don’t give all the answers, but I do raise some issues and say we can at least start by listening to each other. … More Engaging the Global Polylogue: Why Listen to Christians in the Majority World When it Comes to Sexual Ethics?
In his book The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis writes: “To the Ancients, Friendship seemed the happiest and most fully human of all loves; the crown of life and the school of virtue. The modern world, in comparison, ignores it.” Its not just that we are poorer without friends, but one can die without friends. … More The Lost Art of Friendship: Building Trust and Affection with Strangers as the Medicine of Life
This new podcast from Christianity Today is dramatic, critical, intense, and wide-ranging in its exploration of the collapse of an evangelical megachurch and its megapersonality, Mark Driscoll. The production is stellar, and the analysis both trenchant and candid. The trailer says: “Its a story of power, platform and fame, and an unflinching look at the cost.” … More A Train Wreck in Slow Motion: The Rise and Fall of Mark Driscoll’s Unbridled Charisma
A biblically Christian worldview is well positioned to compensate for the compartmentalization we see in the secular academy. After all, our most basic confession as Christians is that our world belongs to God, which has huge ramifications for our task as academics. If God has brought into being an orderly creation subject to his laws and norms, we can come to our respective fields of scholarly endeavour confident that they find their place within an integral whole sustained by God himself through Jesus Christ. … More Taking the Bible Seriously in Scholarship
Our Global Scholar Dr. Jean Bieri died of natural causes, alone in his own apartment in Montreal, Quebec, on the weekend of September 25th 2021. This was sudden and unexpected, and we are in a state of shock and disbelief. I looked back at his application for our guild and pieced together a few reflections on his life and faith. … More Dr. Jean Bieri: A World of Wonders from Electrons to the Cosmos
The Blind Men and the Elephant is a well-known story that reminds us we are all a little bit right and a little bit wrong. But are we equally right and equally wrong? And who is the king who sees that there are blind men and an elephant? There is something suspicious in this parable worth parsing… … More An Elephant in the World Religions Classroom: Parsing a Parable
This guest blog by comparative education specialist Ruth Hayhoe shows how the model of Christian liberal arts universities finds affinities and historical integration with Confucian ideals in China, suggesting that some of these integrated Chinese universities–with their commitment to moral formation, community service and global citizenship education, may be an exemplar for other cultures to follow. … More Chinese-Christian Cross-Cultural Learning in Higher Education
Sensus Divinitatis 