This week I reflected on what I’ve learned from Anabaptist Christianity, reported on how I’m seeing (and not seeing) AI in college writing, and asked why there’s no Book of Jesus in the Bible. Elsewhere:
• Speaking of… Philip Jenkins reminded us that most of the world’s Christians use Bibles whose tables of contents would look off to Protestants.
• A leading New Testament scholar reversed himself on human sexuality.
• Can evangelicals rebrand themselves again?
• Probably not if they continue to be joined at the hip with one political party.
• Surveys find that most evangelicals do want immigration reform, but bipartisan action on that issue is unlikely.
• If you only know Beth Allison Barr as the author of The Making of Biblical Womanhood, read her most recent Substack: a poignant glimpse inside her life as a mother.
• Perhaps the first time I’ve ever linked to Teen Vogue, which asked young people why they prefer spirituality to religion.
• What’s the future of American civil religion in the ongoing Age of Trump?
• An English pastor suggested that churches in a polarized America could “become known throughout the land as beacons of hope for a process by which the most divided people in the nation find they have more in common than what separates them—and come to realize these divisions are luxuries the world can no longer afford.”
• It’s not just the new Civil War movie: “If the U.S. is an ‘imagined community,’ as the anthropologist Benedict Anderson described the modern nation-state, one of the things its citizens most love to imagine is its violent undoing.”
• I don’t actually listen to National Public Radio all that often. So I wondered what NPR listeners out there thought of this insider critique: “An open-minded spirit no longer exists within NPR, and now, predictably, we don’t have an audience that reflects America.”
• From time to time I do listen to Minnesota Public Radio, which recently profiled retired Bethel art professor Dale Johnson.
• In that story, Dale professed surprise that he lasted over forty years at a conservative Christian college. But the traditional strength of that Bethel department just underscores for me why the church needs artists.
• When we wrap up our History and Politics of Sports class next month, we’ll spend a week on the future of higher education, which might include unionization.
• We’ll also talk about sports gambling, which puts additional pressures on student-athletes.
• Like this Christian psychology professor, I’ve hesitated to let students see me cry while teaching. But he suggests good reasons for professors to express sadness in the classroom.
• The same week a state university professor took to The Chronicle of Higher Education to lament his institution gutting the liberal arts, a petition circulated to keep a religious university from doing the same.
(You don’t need to click the link to find out which university it is. It’s Valparaiso.
And I did sign this particular petition — because I know plenty of humanities professors who teach at Valpo or have done so in the past, and because I respected its guiding vision as “a place where ‘Athens and Jerusalem’ could meet, holding fast to eternal truths about God and humanity, while finding innovative ways of applying them in a changing world.” No Christian university can pursue that vision while discarding majors in theology, philosophy, and languages.)
Loved reading about Dale, thanks for passing that along.