Jonathan Zimmermann: American higher education has to deal much with bad news, as any quick scan of the country’s front pages will confirm: skyrocketing costs, runaway debt, sexual violence, and sluggish students more interested in partying than learning. But consider the following description of Bard College students, by one of their professors: Students report that classes are “totally absorbing,” which is clearly evident in the classrooms. The intensity of student engagement is seen in the consistently lively class discussions. The... Read more

Katie Rose Quandt: On Wednesday, Maryam Mirzakhani became the first woman in 78 years to be awarded the prestigious Fields Medal, considered the highest honor in mathematics. She was selected for “stunning advances in the theory of Riemann surfaces and their moduli spaces.” The Fields Medal is awarded every four years by the International Mathematical Union to outstanding mathematicians under 40 who show promise of future achievement. With the announcement of Mirzakhani and this year’s other awardees—Arthur Avila, Manjul Bhargava,... Read more

Julia Zauzmer: [HT: LNMM]  Who has some stories to tell us? — and please speak up. What are you seeing in your community when it comes to intentional racial reconciliation? JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — The topic of the public lecture at the seminary was “The Bible and Race,” and the discussion had turned to “racial reconciliation,” buzzwords used for new efforts to heal old rifts. What would it look like, one pastor wanted to know, for a church to actually become “racially... Read more

Emma Gray: Over the summer, the gold medal-winning Olympic gymnast faced vicious online attacks about her hair, her facial expressions and the fact that she did not place her hand on her heart during one medal ceremony. She spoke candidly on Tuesday afternoon during a conversation with fellow Olympian Ibtihaj Muhammad and author Luvvie Ajayi at the MAKERS Conference, about just how difficult it was to deal with the (racist, sexist) backlash: In Rio I got the brunt of it. It was... Read more

Chris Gehrz has an exceptional post on Swedist Baptists and pacifism, and there is much more at the blog link [HT: JS] During World War II, nearly 12,000 Americans registered as conscientious objectors and joined the Civilian Public Service (CPS). Unwilling to take human life, they instead served their country by doing everything from fighting forest fires to serving as test subjects for medical experiments. Most came from historic peace churches: Mennonite, Brethren, or Quaker. But Christians from over 200 denominations participated in... Read more

By John Frye: Tom Wright, in his popular book Simply Good News: Why the Gospel is News and What Makes it Good, writes, “…[T]he God who masterminds both creation and covenant is a God of love—utter, self-giving, merciful, reconciling, healing, restorative love” (69). In our many discussions about the gospel, robust and reduced, we must not move from the core reality: the New Testament gospel reveals the character of the loving God who saves us. One version of the reduced... Read more

By Michelle Van Loon www.MomentsAndDays.org and www.MichelleVanLoon.com Hear O Israel, the Lord our God. The Lord is One. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself. There is no commandment greater than these. Readers familiar to this blog will recognize the words of the Jesus Creed. The last few months have stretched my understanding of the challenge and necessity of... Read more

kgalgano Everyone loves tiny houses these days, and everyone hates that there are so many homeless people in our country who have served to defend it in the military. Now, a group in Missouri is taking this love/hate dynamic and putting together an incredible idea. An organization called Veterans Community project has built an entire village of tiny houses to provide homes for homeless veterans. This idea is both cost effective and empowering, and has potential to be replicated from... Read more

The second essay in The Emergence of Personhood, A Quantum Leap? was written by Ian Tattersall, Curator Emeritus, Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History.  In his essay Tattersall digs more deeply into what it means to be human from the perspective of evolutionary biology. He agrees with Richard Byrne (see The Dividing Line) that capacity for language is an important factor, but capacity for language is only one piece of a larger picture – an active sense of... Read more

In Kenneth Woodward’s fantastic new book, Getting Religion: Faith, Culture, and Politics from the Age of Eisenhower to the Era of Obama, we are treated to an accessible, insightful, and critical examination of Christianity in the 1960s, which Woodward knows can be extended five years either way, in which his thesis is ever-so-telling and right: the secular becomes the sacred. That is, social activism became the fundamental core of Christian faith and discipleship during this period for a large segment of... Read more