This week I argued that dropping its faith screen could strengthen — not threaten — the religious mission of a Christian university, recalled the anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down, shared a prayer for Election Day, and reflected on the resurrection. Elsewhere:
• When it comes to elections, Christian political scientist
reminded Christians “to lead the way in losing well.”
• As always, there was a lot of attention paid this year to Christian (especially evangelical) engagement in politics… but some midterm reporting also turned to Muslims and atheists.
• There’s no greater threat to democracy than fascism — all the more so because some fascists think they’re the true democrats.
• I don’t normally pay a lot of attention to state offices other than governor, but this year’s secretary of state races were exceptions to that rule.
• Ryan Burge continued to use survey data to overturn conventional wisdom about religion: “Those who are the most likely to be religiously unaffiliated are those with the lowest levels of formal education. The group that is the most likely to align with a faith tradition? Those who have earned a college degree or more.”
• “The ‘scandal of the evangelical mind’ is real,” wrote John Fea. “And it has led American evangelicals into some really dark places in the last few decades. But evangelicalism also made me a reader, a thinker, and a truth-seeker. It was because of evangelicalism that this working-class kid became a historian.”
• A Jesuit journalist suggested how Christians can “learn from the Bible how to look at American history[.]”
• Our 1st-year students will be reading Sarah Grimké later this month, as our Christianity and Western Culture class visits the intersection of abolitionism and women’s rights in the 19th century. But a new book finds the Grimké story more complicated than I’d realized.
• I haven’t seen it yet, but I’m intrigued to watch Netflix’s new adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front — though on an American streaming service, it’s the first German film based on that German WWI novel.
• “Against the evidence,” complained H.W. Brands, democratic peace theory “permits the belief that in American history, peace is the norm and war the exception.”
• I’m not going to go as far as teaching a course on how to edit Wikipedia, but I do think it’s wise for students to learn how to use it well.
• Should those of us stay on Twitter, or go?
• If that social medium does collapse,
for one will miss Twitter.• “Maybe we cannot hibernate all winter long,” wrote Tish Harrison Warren, “but we can give ourselves permission to crawl in bed earlier and hit the snooze button with impunity.”
• It’s easy to love beauty, observed Yolanda Pierce. But “who will love the ugly things in life? Who will love the people considered to be ugly? And can our feelings of disgust and distaste for the ugly keep us from fully walking in the will of God?”
• Finally, I couldn’t say it better than another Christian college professor already did: “…the most important virtue for faith-based teaching is gratitude. When our hearts are bathed in gratitude, we see our students and our work as wonderful gifts. We build immunity to the cynical, critical attitudes that can infect academe, including Christian universities.”