Divinity United

There is an excellent piece entitled "Philosopher Kings: Business Leaders would benefit from studying great writers" in the Schumpeter column of the October 4th 2014 Economist. The article is a lament with some poignant comments arguing that business leaders would be better off spending weekends reading great books and discussing big ideas with others rather than doing team building exercises or experiencing leadership skills on a kayak trip. The call is for business leaders to take some "inward-bound" courses instead of the typical outward-bound courses. I think that the piece offers some great advice, and I think that the advice shouldn't just be taken by business leaders. Everyone in every walk of life could use a few big ideas and read a great book or two. Connecting with the broader ideas of what humanity is and what culture is can expand our horizons and challenge us to rethink our own narrow parts of the world. If a business leader can be encourage to...

Here is a brief excerpt from Robert H. Gundry's essay "Learning for Spirituality" which is in his new book Extracurriculars: Teaching Christianly Outside Class. It was originally an address given in chapel at Westmont College where Gundry is Professor Emeritus and Scholar-in-Residence. "...my point...is not to work Christianity into your business. It's not to work spirituality into your learning. You should, of course. You should make your learning an act of worship by putting a Christian perspective on the literature you study, on the art, on the psychology, on the sociology, the political science--on whatever you study. Sometimes it'll be easy to do, sometimes hard to do. How do you put a Christian perspective on math? I don't know. Maybe our math teachers can tell us. But this morning isn't about putting learning into spirituality, about infusing our learning with spirituality. It's the other way around. It's about putting learning into ...

James McGrath just tweeted a link to this article by Michael Zimmerman at the Huffington Post . It is a great piece on the value of the liberal arts, and it highlights how employers actually want exactly what liberal arts grads have to offer. The exerpt from the winner of the student essay...superb! This is why I teach undergraduates at a liberal arts institution. This is why I believe the liberal arts is the best education on offer. Anyone for a Canadian Consortium for the Liberal Arts? I am all for it.

"...for the love of letters, and the benefit of reading, are bounded, not by the time spent at school, but by the extent of life."  -- Quintilian, Institutio oratorio , 1.8.12. A great little reminder that learning is not about formal education, but learning is for life.

The cover story of Christianity Today's  March 2012 is an article by Perry L. Glanzer entitled: "The Missing Factor in Higher Education: How Christian Universities are Unique, and How They Can Stay That Way."  Glanzer makes an excellent case for the Christian university and it is a reminder for those of us working in Christian higher education about what makes us different and why what we do is valuable. Glanzer argues that teaching morals, wisdom, and character development are often what is missing at secular or research universities. The focus in larger, research universities is on the transfer of knowledge or the content of subjects. The smaller, Christian liberal arts universities have placed emphasis on the pursuit of truth and wisdom, along with the development of the entire individual rather than on purely emphasizing expertise in a specific subject area He warns that Christian universities could lose this strength by focusing on expertise versus on pursuing w...

I have recently finished reading Stratford Caldecott's, Beauty for Truth's Sake: On the Re-enchantment of Education . The first chapter on the Liberal Arts continues to be the most interesting for me, but the rest of the book brings together the importance of beauty's place in education. So much of the world whether music, mathematics, science, or architecture has beauty and order to it, as Caldecott has shown. It is an excellent book and a good argument for the place of religion in education. After I finished the book, I thumbed through it for the places I had highlighted. This passage on page 28 still strikes a chord with me: "The sheer amount of information available in every discipline is far too great to be mastered by one person in an entire lifetime. The purpose of an education is not merely to communicate information, let alone current scientific opinion, nor to train future workers and managers. It is to teach the ability to think, discriminate, speak, an...