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Balthasar Sandbox 6: Forming the Beholder’s Eye
This week I was talking about beauty with my freshman writing class to prepare them to evaluate a work of art. When I asked my students to define beauty several of them predictably claimed that it was...
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Truth, Beauty: Why I Teach Beautiful Poetry
When we look at the world through the eyes of measurements and data, we think about how we can use the thing we are measuring. But when we look at the world through eyes that see its beauty, we lay...
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Illuminating Words, Transforming Beauty
Since many of our conversations here involve the role of beauty in teaching, and since Megan discussed the Saint John’s Bible in her excellent post last week (I promise we didn’t coordinate), I’d like...
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Rape and the Christian University (Part 1)
This has been a traumatic semester for a lot of people I know and care about. Several of my students have come to me this semester and confessed that they had recently been raped. If you are reading...
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Rape and the Christian University (Part 2)
Yesterday, I posted a few thoughts on the nature of rape. Today, I want to turn to the question of what we can do to stop this phenomenon of rape on our campuses. Just like my previous post, these are...
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A “religiously neutral” Liberal Education?
National Humanities Medal recipient, and longtime advocate of the revival of truly liberal education, Eva Brann offers a “Manifesto for Liberal Education” (via one of the many publications influenced...
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Organizing Enlightenment at a Christian University
Organizing Enlightenment, by Chad Wellmon, charts the way eighteenth-century German universities developed as a response to an overwhelming amount of printed information. Much like the contemporary...
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Do Androids Worship in Electric Temples? (Part 1)
Science fiction has a deep and abiding interest in religious matters. But why this interest? And what makes science fiction qualified to address it in a way that will profit our students?
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Do Androids Worship in Electric Temples? Part 2
This is the second part of a two-part series on an interdisciplinary course I taught with a colleague this semester: Do Androids Worship in Electric Temples? Science Fiction through the Lens of...
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Emotivism and Teaching Ethics
In a week I will teach a summer course on Christian Ethics. I haven’t yet taught an Ethics class, but my other classes all have an ethical bent to them. Having seen how many of my students set about...
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Illumination
Throughout the coming year, as Spring Arbor University hosts a Heritage Edition of The Saint John’s Bible, I’ll be posting reflections on specific illuminations both here on Christ and University and...
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Education for What?
James K.A. Smith over at Comment, has an interesting—and curmudgeonly—essay praising newspapers and asking what the purpose of education is. Read the whole thing, but here is an excerpt: It’s easy to...
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Alan Jacobs on Trigger Warnings
Earlier this summer, I started a post about trigger warnings. As I combed the internet doing research, I stumbled across this gem by Alan Jacobs. In this post, Jacobs talks about guiding students...
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Is Belief Bad? An Open Letter to First-Year Composition Students
Our culture says that only thing we can know to be absolutely true is factual data. Our culture says that belief and opinion are largely valueless, better kept to ourselves than asserted as truth. Yet...
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The Dubiousness of Leadership
I’ve been thinking about leadership lately. I’ve been writing lots of letters of recommendation, all of which have asked me to evaluate a student’s “potential for leadership.” I’ve also been working in...
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Make a Poisonous Serpent
The Lectionary reading for Sunday, September 14, is from John 3, where Jesus uses a variety of striking metaphors to tell Nicodemus how to enter the Kingdom of God. Nicodemus can’t seem to understand...
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The Sower and the Seed
Last week I looked at one of the abstract illuminations in The Saint John’s Bible, and this week I’ll turn to one in the tradition of Eastern iconography. This illumination stands at the beginning of...
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Esther
The Old Testament lectionary reading for Sunday, September 27 comes from Esther. This complex and fascinating person receives a rich portrait in The Saint John’s Bible, one that foregrounds her liminal...
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The Garden of Eden
One of the lectionary readings this past week was from Genesis 2, which relates the second version of the creation story. Whereas in Genesis 1, God creates humans on the last day, as the crown of...
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The Long Way to Learning: A Story
The truth is, becoming a better writer is not something that happens overnight. We expect it to, deluded by a society which offers 10-week fitness plans and pizza on delivery into thinking that the...
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