Fides Quaerens Intellectum

If our universities are to become more than professional schools, their rationalism needs to be in dialogue with other “traditions of inquiry.” For the most important matters in life include such matters as hope, depression, trust, purpose, and wisdom.  If secularism purges such concerns from the curriculum for lack of a way to address them, [...]

Since I started graduate school in 1997 I’ve appreciated the thoughtfulness that University of Chicago scholar Jean Bethke Elshtain has brought to bear on seemingly countless topics of faith and culture.  In my most recent wanderings through an as yet unread book on faith and learning in my personal library (although I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit I [...]

A fair portion of my Ph.D. dissertation is on the history of higher education in the United States.  In my research I came across the Rev. Dr. John Witherspoon’s account of the College of New Jersey (e.g., Princeton) where he served as president beginning in 1768.  Given my roles at the Chick-fil-A sponsored IMPACT 360 (www.impact360.net) [...]

“The purpose of a Christian education would not be merely to make men and women pious Christians: a system which aimed rigidly at this end alone would become only obscurantist. A Christian education would primarily train people to be able to think in Christian categories…” -T.S. Eliot

Son of Westminster’s blogpost the other day on David Dockery and his blog interview on faith and learning in the Christian college inspired me to post something in the same vein, although what follows here is just a bit older by comparison.  Noah Porter, president of Yale in the late nineteenth century, delivered the keynote address at [...]

NBC 10 in Philly reports: The father of the 16-year-old who killed himself inside his high school Tuesday over a less-than-satisfactory report card urged students at a candlelight vigil to listen to troubled classmates. His son, Shane Halligan, died after he put what appeared to be an AK-47 to his chin and pulled the trigger [...]

Happy Thanksgiving!               In May 2005, I had the privilege of visiting Wheaton College and spending nearly an entire day with president Duane Litfin.  We discussed, among other things, the landscape of Christian higher education in the United States and the current challenges that institutions face both internally and externally.  I also had the [...]