If the Vanderbilt transition from Methodist to neuter exhibits a typical pattern of academic secularization, what we will find at the root of these events is a sponsoring church that is nonchalant about its burden: one that wishes to be the patron of a college or university without being its . . . . Continue Reading »
Half a mile, not more, separates 50th Street and Park Avenue in central Manhattan from the northwest corner of 42nd Street and Seventh Avenue. But the two points mark the antipodes of New York City’s axis of religious dedication: to timelessness at one pole, to change at the other. On the 50th . . . . Continue Reading »
The expression of art—the exploration of figurative and abstract thought in tangible external forms—is unique to human beings. Even as we think in words, we imagine in the “language” of images. Art is one of the great facilitators of human dialogue, and it provides us as well with . . . . Continue Reading »
Exploring the influence of televangelism on American religion in his book The Struggle for America’s Soul, Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow presents a typical, though hypothetical, case study: Mabel Miller. Mabel lives alone, thousands of miles from her family. She grew up in a . . . . Continue Reading »
Christianity is an inherently missionary faith. According to the Gospel of Matthew, the last word of the resurrected Lord to his disciples was this: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to . . . . Continue Reading »
Surveys provide additional evidence that Americans are returning to “traditional values.” Traditional values is usually a synonym for common sense or moral platitudes. Such sense is common and such morality is platitudinous because they are powerfully confirmed and reconfirmed by human . . . . Continue Reading »
Every civilization has had its own ways of getting materials out of the bio-physical environment in order to feed, clothe, and house people, and to move people and things from where they are to where we want them to go. People with technical abilities know how to do things, how to make instruments . . . . Continue Reading »
“There was a bole of an olive tree with long leaves growing Strongly in the courtyard, and it was thick, like a column. I laid down my chamber around this.” The Odyssey, Book XXIII Where but in bed does the world begin. Where man and woman know, like children. By touch and taste, by gentlest . . . . Continue Reading »
Up and down the oneway streets of houses huddled deep and close together, sycamores, live oaks brace up to the concrete, break through, their dark roots surfacing, disrupting the order of a New Orleans neighborhood. A block away the laughter, the games belong to black . . . . 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 »
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