No, the situation could hardly be more serious, unless Diocletian reclined still in his palace, and martyrs still faced night arrest and torture in the amphitheaters. The situation could hardly be more dire, unless the old Roman law still survived that stated flatly, frighteningly, “It is unlawful . . . . Continue Reading »
Small-town America maintains its grip on . . . . Continue Reading »
The early Church father Tertullian asked a famous question, one that has been asked again and again in the history of the Church, and that I would like to ask again: “What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?” By Athens he means intellectual culture, the life of the mind, the study of . . . . Continue Reading »
Books on Islam, we are told, are enjoying brisk sales. For reasons related to the imperialist past of those countries, intellectuals in England and France have generally paid more attention to Islam than have Americans. Apart from academic specialists, American interest in Islam has been limited . . . . Continue Reading »
How should we counteract the negative developments in the lives of America's . . . . Continue Reading »
It is virtually axiomatic in higher education circles that the more money spent on the educational enterprise the better the results. Although just what “better results” might mean is often left unclear, the nexus between money and quality education is rarely subject to challenge. The word most . . . . Continue Reading »
Legion are the universities and colleges in the United States founded under the auspices of the churches. Princeton, Calvin, Hanover, Tulsa, and Macalaster were founded as Presbyterian or Reformed. Brown, Baylor, Wake Forest, Spelman, and Vassar were Baptist. Haverford, Swarthmore, Earlham, . . . . Continue Reading »
We live in a time when ethics has become big business: medical schools hire medical ethicists, business schools hire business ethicists. Congress has an ethics committee, and schools and universities are supposed to teach values. As a theologian trained in ethics, I suppose I should be happy about . . . . Continue Reading »
Politics, Markets, & America’s Schools is an enlightening, albeit statistically overstuffed, study of achievement, organization, and the political context of schooling. The authors, John Chubb and Terry Moe, reach one sound and important conclusion: deep structural reform of U.S. schooling, . . . . Continue Reading »
Our subject is one of those peculiar phenomena taken for granted in the contemporary world but which from an historical perspective seem anomalous. The phenomenon is that the huge numbers of Protestants in the United States support almost no distinctively Christian program in higher education other . . . . Continue Reading »
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