1. No Christianity Please, We’re Academics: In Inside Higher Ed, Wheaton professor Timothy Larsen calls for universities and faculty to confront bias against Christians in higher education. Though there are some studies to back up his claims, he focuses on a couple of personal examples of bias and ignorance faced by himself and an undergraduate student.

[After getting a "F" for a paper defending traditional marriage,] John could never get better than a C for papers without any marked errors or corrections. When he asked for a reason why yet another grade was so poor he was told that it was inappropriate to quote C. S. Lewis in work for an English class because he was “a pastor.” (Lewis, of course, was actually an English professor at Cambridge University. Perhaps it was wrong to quote Lewis simply because he had said something recognizably Christian.) Eventually John complained to the department chair, who said curtly that he could do nothing until the course was over. John took this to mean that the chair would do nothing and just accepted the bad grade.

Larsen also cites some comments rejecting his proposal for a scholarly book of essays on T. S. Eliot’s Idea of a Christian Society, which largely focused on the truth/relevance of Christianity as a belief system, rather than the importance of Eliot’s book or the quality of the proposal.

As you might imagine, the comments on the article have gotten pretty heated.

2. How private will public higher education institutions become and how does that not only affect cost, but the vision for what receives attention on campus?  Tom recently visited Penn State University — State College.  He was once again impressed by the roar of this inspirational flagship campus, particularly in contrast to what is happening just to the north.

TWO things define the State University of New York. It’s huge. And compared to its public peers, it’s weird.

[Response]:  “My belief is that to move an organization forward you have to have a common, comprehensive and ambitious agenda,” Dr. Zimpher said. “It has to be aspirational. It has to move you. I think the full manifestation of SUNY is underexposed and underexploited. If people really knew and understood the difference these campuses make in their communities they would be amazed.” …

“The strategic plan doesn’t talk about educational missions, it doesn’t talk about affordability or accessibility, there’s very little about undergraduate education and keeping it affordable and accessible,” said Phillip H. Smith, president of the powerful United University Professions union, which represents more than 34,000 academic and professional faculty members. “It reflects an attempt to corporatize the university.” — The Accidental Giant of Higher Education (Peter Applebome. NY Times. 7/19/2010)

PS. For more on the Public Higher Education Empowerment and Innovation Act, read Stop Raiding the Ivory Tower — a 7/27/2010 NY Times Op-Ed by Peter D. Salins (a former provost of the State University of New York, is a professor of political science at the State University at Stony Brook).

3.  The Senior Professor: Deadwood or Iceberg? (David D. Perlmutter. The Chronicle of Higher Education. 7/25/2010).  Tom particularly appreciated the second comment which focused upon the question of productivity and for what end it is pursued, i.e., publications for tenure (not the advancement of knowledge)?

4.  How to Land a Job at a Small College (Nancy Hanway. The Chronicle of Higher Education. 7/25/2010). Lots of practical material to pray through as you craft a letter which

1. succinctly and “cleanly” shares your enthusiasm/passion for and preparation to work at a small college
2. provides helpful glimpses of (but doesn’t overdo) your dissertation, any gaps in your file, and personal interests.

5. The Best Magazine Articles…Ever: Kevin Kelly, editor-at-large for Wired, has assembled a great list of, well, the “best magazine articles ever,” based on recommendations from a few dozen readers and writers. The article includes a link to submit your own recommendations. Articles range from 1945 to 2010; include  sports writing, politics, nature writing, philosophy, technology, science writing, and more; and feature a few writers you might have heard of (John Updike, David Foster Wallace, John McPhee…). A great way to waste some time expend your fields of knowledge.

[BTW, in addition to his ground-breaking work at Wired, Kelly is a Christian and is also heavily involved with the Long Now Foundation. Here is a CT interview about his faith, religion, and technology titled "How Computer Nerds Describe God." Kelly has written a paper titled "Nerd Theology" and appeared on This American Life speaking about his dramatic conversion.]

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In Summer 2010, Ted Davis (History of Science, Messiah College) presented a series of four free lectures on 'A Short History of Christianity and Science' for the Pennsylvania Chautauqua, Mt. Gretna, PA. Interested in having Ted speak on your campus? If so, you might consider 1 or more of the topics from this series, http://www.messiah.edu/godandscience/fall10/short_history.html.

Last week, Edward B. (“Ted”) Davis, Distinguished Professor of the History of Science at Messiah College (Grantham, PA) and outgoing president of the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA), shared with us how he became interested in History of Science and some tips for Emerging Scholars as they seek academic positions. In this second post, we explore recommended resources for those interested in the History of Science. Let’s get started …

Thomas B. Grosh IV [TG]: For members of ESN with an interest in History of Science [HSC], what resources would you recommend as a place to get started? Would you have a book recommendation for a campus discussion group?

Ted Davis [TD]: Unfortunately many of the best historians of science write little or nothing for “popular” audiences, i.e., non-scholars. Ironically, the book that has probably sold more copies than any other book in my field, Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” (more than one million copies are reported to be in circulation), was written in terse academic prose for a very narrow audience, namely positivist philosophers of science—whose work was, equally ironically, all but undermined by Kuhn, even though he had not intended to do so. Readers who like Kuhn should be able to handle almost anything else in HSC, regardless of the audience for whom it was written. I had to read two of Kuhn’s books in Dr. Rosen’s course at Drexel, and I found both of them fascinating despite my very limited acquaintance with HSC at the time.

The kind of literature that could attract a person to HSC, however, might actually be something that was not written by a professional Historian of Science, such as the books on history of physics that I mentioned in the first part of this interview. A perfect example is Dava Sobel’s Galileo’s Daughter:  A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love. Sobel is neither a professional Historian nor even a scholar; she is a science writer who reads the professional scholars very carefully, understands them, and presents a very persuasive picture of Galileo life and his interactions with others in that book. I think that she’s a little too uncritical of the relationship between Galileo and his daughter, but overall the book is a very fine book. Anyone who likes that book might be interested in studying HSC.

Some other writers have written some excellent popular books about HSC.  For example, Dennis Danielson’s book, The First Copernican: Georg Joachim Rheticus and the Rise of the Copernican Revolution, about the Lutheran scholar who persuaded Copernicus to publish. It’s not going to sell as many copies as Sobel’s book, but it’s a very approachable, well written, and accurate book about an important aspect of Copernicus’ ideas and their reception. Danielson is a professor of English literature, but also trained in philosophy and intellectual history. He understands the early modern period, but he also understands how to write a good book.

Since we’re talking about history of astronomy, perhaps the best study of that for the general reader is still the book by Arthur Koestler called The Sleepwalkers. It’s a massive book, more than 600 pages including lots of technical details, yet so well written and interesting. Actually, it’s several different books under one cover, relating the story of astronomy down to Newton from the ancient Greeks. Koestler was a major novelist, but he also did his homework quite well for that book. The interpretations he provides for Copernicus and Galileo are highly questionable. He calls Copernicus “the timid canon,” which has some plausibility but he’s not very sympathetic with Copernicus. His strongly negative picture of Galileo is partly accurate, but I don’t think that it’s that well balanced. On the other hand, the picture he provides of Johannes Kepler is nothing short of brilliant. Published separately as The Watershed, it’s a wonderful, novelesque piece of nonfiction.

Anyone interested in HSC could get into it through these kinds of sources.  The professional historians are still not writing very much along those lines, though there are some outstanding exceptions, such as Edward Larson’s superb book on the Scopes trial.  That’s part of the reason we’re not highly visible—we don’t usually try to write for popular audiences. It’s our own fault, and I don’t hesitate to apply this observation to myself. I’ve written a few blog posts and a couple of chapters for trade books, but nothing has gotten much attention except an essay I wrote many years ago about modern Jonah stories. That one was featured on a couple of BBC radio programs, and I still get inquiries about it from people who stumble across my name. In many cases, I sense that scholars are simply not interested in writing something that isn’t seen as scholarship in the traditional sense; certainly many research universities aren’t ready to give them credit for it, though perhaps that will change as the internet becomes more important to scholars.

In my case, I’m torn between trying to help create a new history of Christianity and science—a crucial job that has to be done mostly with traditional scholarship, in order for the ideas to be taken seriously— and wanting at the same time to get the word out to the general public, including Christians with an interest in science. Allotting time to disparate tasks is a zero-sum game, and a lot of my time already goes to students, family, church, and the ASA. I can’t be the only scholar who feels pulled in different directions. The Templeton Foundation has been able to free up scholars for a few key projects that might help alter the general situation, but what is really needed in my opinion is a group of young Christian writers who will devote their careers to doing what Sobel has done: to take the best scholarship and write about it in the most interesting ways they possibly can.

TG: If some members of ESN have friends who desire to get together to discuss topics from History of Science, how about Galileo Goes to Jail?

TD: Something like Galileo Goes to Jail could be good. Incidentally, that book resulted from one of the projects that Templeton has supported. It was expensive to do, but it’s a rare example of scholars trying to reach a general audience with current knowledge, without watering it down but also without getting bogged down unhelpfully by the kinds of arguments between specialists that scholars like to get into. The book covers a lot of interesting topics, and there’s enough of them that readers can just go for the ones that catch their attention. Perhaps this book will prove to be a good introduction to HSC, but as a compilation it lacks the unity and energy of Sobel or Koestler; of course, not just anyone can write as well as they can.

InterVarsity Press has a very good book on HSC: The Galileo Connection, by the late Charles Hummel. He was a chemist, but he consulted with a lot of people in HSC about the chapters as he was writing. It’s a very good book that I still use as a textbook in my History of Modern Science course. I like the fact that it takes a biographical approach to the history of Copernican astronomy. The Copernicus-to-Newton story is told primarily through the biographical type of approach. He then jumps into some issues which are more contemporary, but there he drops the biographical approach, so you could say that it’s really two different books in one cover.

Owen Gingerich has done some writing that’s a little more accessible, such as articles in Scientific American and other places about people such as Galileo, Tycho, or Kepler.  His recent book, God’s Universe, isn’t really HSC, but does have some historical reflection on some of the science and religion issues today, especially those related to origins.  I recommended it unreservedly over at “First Things.”

TG: It was great to hear you once again address The Galileo Affair: What Really Happened. For those interested in this topic what would recommend they read?

TD: Above all, I would recommend the Dava Sobel book Galileo’s Daughter:  A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love.  Anything by Ernan McMullin or William Shea is also worth reading.

TG: In addition to The Galileo Affair: What Really Happened, what are other topics that you’ve explored and are open to speaking on?

TD: I’ve written and spoken about Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, the History of American Religion and Science — not focused on a specific individual, but a broader cultural history of religion and science in America.

TG: For campuses seeking to create a guest series on the relationship of religion and science, who would you recommend they consider inviting?

TD:

1. Owen Gingerich, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and of the History of Science at Harvard University and a senior astronomer emeritus at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.
2. Ian Hutchison, Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering, Nuclear Science and Engineering, Alcator C-Mod Plasma Confinement Experiment Co-Principal
3. Jennifer Wiseman, an astronomer of NASA, who as of this year is the new director of the AAAS office in charge of the Dialogue on Science, Ethics and Religion, and she is the current ASA President.

TG: You’ve once again mentioned the ASA. If one’s a young Emerging Scholar in the sciences, what would one take away from participating in the upcoming meetings in Washington, D.C.?

TD: I think the biggest benefit to someone from InterVarsity attending the ASA meeting would be awareness raising: simply the experience of discovering that there’s this sizeable community of Christians who are seriously engaged with the issues of faith and science from multiple points of view as Christians. There are a lot of other people who not only share this interest, but also actually devote some time to thinking and writing about these things. That can be very helpful to know. Let alone the chance to get to sit down and talk with some of them, hear some of them speak. Come just to have the whole general. We bring together people with common interests and faith, even though our opinions on specific topics range widely.

TG: If an interested scholar misses this year, what future opportunities where there be? When are the meetings in 2011?

TD: The next conference will be at North Central College, in the Chicago area, from July 29-Aug 1, 2011. We sometimes have regional meetings in the Washington D.C. and Philadelphia areas, but these are sporadic. Some of the events sponsored by the Central Pennsylvania Forum for Religion and Science are in coordination with the Eastern Pennsylvania Section.

Thank-you Ted!  Looking forward to being with you at the ASA meetings (July 30 – August 2) and a number of the special events which you’re planning in the fall for the Central Pennsylvania Forum for Religion and Science.  For those with interest in these opportunities, please check out the websites and/or be in touch with one of us.

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• Reflecting on Psalm 90:Two of my favorite colleages — Graduate & Faculty Ministries National Director Bobby Gross and my partner in online materials Tom Trevethan — joined forces to offer a couple of great resources on Psalm 90. Bobby has written a personal liturgy for Psalm 90 to help you begin your day, while Tom has written a Bible study on Psalm 90 to help you go deeper.
• Treating grad students humanely:University of Minnesota professor emeritus Steve Simmons shared his philosophy for treating graduate students with grace in his essay, Students Are a Lot Like People.
• Call for Papers on African American Evangelicalism:InterVarsity’s Black Scholars and Professionals has announced a call for papers for its upcoming Consultation on African American Evangelicalism, co-sponsored by the National Black Evangelical Association and hosted by Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta. (We’ve also recently posted calls for papers on the King James Bible and race, religion, and American society.

Speaking of calls for papers, if you have one to share with ESN members, let me know.

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1. “Look at your grades. Now look at mine.” The Old Spice Man has gone from a series of hilarious television commercials to a full-fledged Internet meme. BYU, however, decided to parody the absurd body wash marketing campaign by marketing…libraries.

If you’re not sick and tired of him, be sure to weigh in on Culture Making’s Five Questions about Old Spice Man.

2. Bias against White Christians at Elite Universities? Ross Douthat, writing in the NY Times, thinks there is.

The most underrepresented groups on elite campuses often aren’t racial minorities; they’re working-class whites (and white Christians in particular) from conservative states and regions. Inevitably, the same underrepresentation persists in the elite professional ranks these campuses feed into: in law and philanthropy, finance and academia, the media and the arts.

In a letter to the editor, Miami University education professor Julie Park thinks Douthat might be

confound[ing] two issues: the underrepresentation of low-income white students in elite universities and the low number of white Christian students at these same institutions. This association is puzzling considering that evangelical Christianity is enjoying somewhat of a renaissance in elite institutions (see “The Holy and the Ivy,” published in Christianity Today in 2005).

On her personal blog, Julie goes into much more detail about factors that affect college admissions for lower-income white students and trends among evangelical Christians at elite universities.

3.  Confessions of a (Sometimes) Helicopter Parent (Patti K. See. Inside Higher Ed. 07/16/2010).  How are you maturing?  If you are in a classroom situation as a TA/lab aid, lecturer, professor, etc., how do you interact with students and/or their parents?  If you are a member of the faculty/administration, married and with children, how are you raising your children?  How do you understand responsibility, maturation, being a ‘lifeline’ to your children.  As I [Tom] read the article, I wondered what college prep and adulthood means in our culture today. Reminds me how I graduated last century in the midst of a shift in not only in the lines of communication (yes, I was 1 phone call a month right before the coming of high usage of the email and cell phones), but also those of adulthood (which had previously been pushed back, unless one happens to be raised in contexts which demand early adulthood, e.g., youth caring for families, youth forced to make it on their own early in life, Amish entering/leaving Rumspringa).

At a recent meeting our provost told a story about receiving a midmorning call from a mother asking if her son was in class.

“I always give my son a wakeup call,” the mother explained, “but he’s not answering.” Our provost — a dean at the time of this experience — told this concerned mother she cannot inform parents if their adult students are in class.

“Student?” the mother exclaimed. “No, he’s teaching the class.”

My colleagues and I groaned. This story could be part of “helicopter parent” legend.

4.   Ernest L. Boyer and the Scholarship of Integration (Nels P. Highberg. The Chronicle of Higher Education. 07/19/2010).  Note: Messiah College’s Boyer Center is inspired by, archives materials from, and develops new material based upon the work of Ernest L. Boyer, a follower of Christ who made significant contributions to the field of education.

One of the challenges in going up for tenure (or applying for jobs or grants) is explaining the significance of your scholarship to those outside your discipline. At my university [U. of Hartford], we are advised to follow a model first explicated by Ernest L. Boyer in Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate.

5.  Educating Imams in Germany: the Battle for a European Islam (Paul Hockenos. The Chronicle of Higher Education. 07/18/2010). As you wrestle with this complex situation, keep in mind that although the German Research University Model has significantly influenced higher education in the United States over the past 100 years, we exist in a much different overall educational and political (church-state) context.

Fostering a generation of German-schooled imams, seen as central to breaking the vicious circle of Muslim exclusion, is the chief aim of an Islamic-theology initiative announced by the government in January. The effort is a vital front of the Islam Conference, started in 2006, an ambitious, wide-ranging process set in motion by the German government to consider the yawning gap between mainstream Germany and its Muslims. The conference, designed to map out a long-term integration strategy, painted a dismal picture of the reality faced by German Muslims. It is a reality marked by meager integration; growing alienation and even fundamentalism among the second and third-generations; the ossification of a Muslim underclass; and dysfunctional communication between Germany and its Muslims, nearly half of whom are German citizens. One of its key recommendations is to focus on the training of the Islamic community’s personnel, including religion teachers, as well as the dearth of Islamic theology in German academe. …

Although the institutes will be anchored in state-financed colleges, the country’s Muslim communities will have a substantial voice in their curricula and management, just as Christian churches do in theology departments across Germany. …

Critics say Islam has already been altered through its emergent Western congregations and interaction with European value systems. The new Islamic institutes in Germany, as well as like-minded programs in Austria, France, and the Netherlands, could well take Islam to places its guardians never intended it to go. That is exactly what the architects of Germany’s Islamic academies hope.

Bonus Links

Did you see that Harvard grad Jeremy Lin has signed a 2-year contract with the NBA’s Golden State Warriors? We don’t traffic much in basketball news on this blog, but this is a special case: Lin was involved with InterVarsity’s Harvard Radcliffe Asian American Christian Fellowship, and he was profiled on both InterVarsity’s website and on StudentSoul. If you haven’t gotten your fill of Jeremy Lin-related news, check out this interview with ESPN’s True Hoop blog, which starts off with the question “How insane is this?” but segues into a discussion of Jeremy’s faith:

How important is the [Asian-American] identity stuff? [Ed.: Jeremy is the first Asian American in the NBA in 63 years.]
You know, it’s important but not as important as my being a Christian. That’s first and foremost the most important thing to me when it comes to my identity.

Is it more important to your folks?
No. We believe in the same thing. That’s how our house is and how I was raised. We’ve always taken our Christianity and our walks with God as our first priority.

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At a recent InterVarsity Christian Fellowship dessert, Ted Davis (left) connects with Messiah College alum Dwight Schwartz (right). Dwight, an ASA member (with a PhD in Chemical Physics from U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), currently serves as the Mid-Atlantic Area Director for InterVarsity's Graduate & Faculty Ministry.

In preparation for next week’s 65^th Annual Meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation,* I interviewed the outgoing ASA President, Edward B. (“Ted”) Davis.  As you may remember from an earlier post, Ted serves as the Distinguished Professor of the History of Science at Messiah College (Grantham, PA), and directs the Central Pennsylvania Forum for Religion and Science.  Our conversation focused upon

1. what sparked his interest in studying the History of Science,
2. tips for Emerging Scholars seeking academic positions,
3. recommendations for those who are curious about and desire to explore History of Science.

Today’s post gives attention to #1 and #2.  Next week, we turn to #3.

Thomas B. Grosh IV [TG]:  This morning as you presented on The Galileo Affair: What Really Happened,** I don’t think anyone in the packed room could miss your passion for the History of Science.  What sparked your interest in History of Science?  Did you grow up desiring to know about the History of Science?

Ted Davis [TD]: I didn’t know that there was a field called the History of Science until I was a student at Drexel.  I did take a couple of courses at Drexel in the History of Science, during my senior year.  They were taught by Dr. Richard Rosen, who has a doctorate in History of Science from Case Western.  So I got a formal exposure to it at Drexel — for which I have always been grateful.

I was majoring in physics then.  Originally I had intended to become an astronomer or astrophysicist, but by the time I took Dr. Rosen’s courses I was becoming more interested in the humanities, and I had decided to try high school science teaching for at least a few years.  I wasn’t sure how much I would like it, or whether I’d be any good at it, but I ended up spending another year at Drexel, taking some graduate courses in physics and some undergraduate courses in education in order to get a teaching certificate.

Dr. Rosen made the subject very interesting, but when I reflected on this later I realized that my interest in the history of science had actually been kindled in high school, though I didn’t realize it at the time.  In those days most college-bound students studied biology in tenth grade, chemistry in eleventh grade, and physics in twelfth grade.  I took chemistry as a junior and absolutely loved it, especially the parts about atomic theory and chemical bonding.  Over the summer, I read some books about those topics, some of them covering technical details at a basic level and others that were about the development of scientific ideas.

My interest in history of science grew out of reading some of those books, especially The Evolution of Physics by Albert Einstein and Leopold Infeld, The Strange Story of the Quantum by Banesh Hoffman, and The Questioners by Barbara Lovett Cline. Strictly speaking those are not History of Science books; they are books about science that employ a quasi-historical framework.  They are not written in a way that a real historian of science would write them.   They tend to gloss over a lot of the aspects of the story that don’t point toward a straight forward scientific goal, they can be a bit sloppy about certain historical details, and they tend to ignore the important roles that cultural, philosophical, and personal elements can play in the story of science.  Nevertheless, they sparked my interest in the development of scientific ideas, an interest that remains paramount for me today.

I read such things when in high school and a decided to major in physics in college primarily because I was interested in those ideas, i.e., the development of physics in the 20^th century — early quantum theory, later quantum theory, and the development of the general and the special theories of relativity.  I found those ideas fascinating, and I still do.  I didn’t actually study that much modern physics at Drexel, ironically, and most of what I did study was not presented as a set of ideas that had a history; that just isn’t how most scientists look at things, even though it can distort the picture of reality that they convey to their students.  I found this very frustrating at the time, and when I later taught physics myself both in high school and at Messiah College, I took steps to include some historical aspects of physics in my courses, even at the inevitable cost of spending less time on the nuts and bolts of certain topics that are standard parts of introductory courses.

You might say that I had a kind of academic conversion experience while I was at Drexel — and this is ironic, given that Drexel was and still is so strongly oriented toward scientific fields rather than the humanities.  One reason I choose to go there instead of to a liberal arts college (I had been admitted to a liberal arts college as well), was that I wanted to get away from the Humanities.  I knew two things when I went to Drexel as a first year student.  One was that I’d never be a teacher and the other was that I hated the Humanities.  Yet here am, a teacher in the Humanities, specifically the History of Science and of Science and Religion.  Socrates said to know thyself, and I found out who I really was in college.

A key experience took place in Charlottesville, Virginia.  Drexel requires all students to spend 18 months in co-operative education, what you would call an internship today.  My co-op experience was in Charlottesville, at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory because I was interested at that time in astrophysics.  I was a research assistant, programming mainframe computers in Fortran, searching for data in scientific journals, and even on one occasion making decisions about which radio sources to observe with the old 300-foot telescope (which fell apart several years later).

So, I was living very close to the campus of the University of Virginia.  During that time, the L’Abri lectures came to UVA [University of Virginia], and I heard some terrific lectures on art history by the late Hans Rookmaaker.  I was so fascinated by what he had to say that I took some art history courses when I went back to Drexel, and I even gave some thought later to doing graduate work in that field, though I ultimately chose history of science instead.  I also had been developing an interest in music history — even in high school I liked classical music, not rock — so I took a couple of courses in music history and did a senior research project on the composer Vaughan Williams.  Though I completed my physics major, I realized that my interests were changing fundamentally and that I no longer wanted to become a scientist.  I wasn’t yet sure what I wanted to do, but science teaching now appealed to me so I decided to try it.

My first job was to teach physics, chemistry, and mathematics at a Christian high school in North Philadelphia.  Soon I decided to add a month-long unit on science and the Bible at the end of the chemistry course.  Through the late Frank Roberts, a geologist who taught at another Christian school in the area, I was introduced to the American Scientific Affiliation (www.asa3.org), the premier North American organization of Christians in the sciences.  From attending their meetings and meeting their members, I started to read seriously about Christianity and science.  Much of that material had a large historical component, and at that point I realized that my original interest in the development of scientific ideas was closely related to the interests that I had been developing in the history of art and music.  The common element was the expression of ideas through culture.

Very soon I decided that I wanted to learn more about Christianity and science, and that the best way for me to do that was to undertake graduate work in the History of Science.  I was in my mid-twenties when I made that decision.  So I applied to graduate schools in the History of Science and I ended up going to the one that offered me a graduate fellowship, Indiana University.  I still didn’t know very much about the faculty at Indiana, and I didn’t visit the school before I accepted the fellowship.  I made a blind decision, in a sense.  Although it turned out very well—I ended up working with the great biographer of Isaac Newton, Richard S. Westfall — I don’t recommend this approach to anyone.

TG:  Were you married at the time?

TD:  Yes.  I met wife teaching high school.  She was an English teacher at the same school.  She knew that I did plan to go to graduate school in something, at some point.  We left for graduate school about fourteen months after we got married.

TG:  As you reflect on your journey as academic, what tips do you have for Emerging Scholars seeking academic positions?

TD: If you want to become a scholar or a scientist in an academic context, then it’s good to have a clear idea whether you want to work in a more high pressure research university context or in a lower pressure undergraduate college context, whether or not it’s a religious college.  Some people have probably made that decision a long time ago, while others might not have made it yet.  You want to have a clear idea, and help from good advisers in graduate school.  Some people are open to either one, but career tracks at these two types of institutions will look a lot different.  If you don’t like teaching, you have no business going the small college route.  Even if you’re a very, very good researcher, if you’re not a good teacher, you’re going to have difficulty at a small college.  Vice versa for the research university track.  It doesn’t matter how good a teacher you are, you’re going to have difficulty if you’re not a successful researcher and a successful grants writer.  It’s not completely unfair to say that teaching doesn’t matter very much at some research universities, for a junior faculty member.  In some places it will matter, but at some places it won’t matter at all — unless one is just a terrible teacher, in which case there isn’t much hope.

TG:  As always, I enjoy hearing what a scholar who has gone before us can share about the academic journey and the dynamics of higher education as a vocation.  Next week come back to learn how you can explore History of Science.  If you’re already familiar and/or studying History of Science, please feel free to share your story in the comment section below and/or provide additional recommendations/insights to this series.  Also, if you have specific History of Science questions, i.e., particular figures, ideas, ‘conflicts,’ post them below and we’ll look to explore them in future posts.

* Wrestling with Science, Faith, & Public Policy in D.C.

** Part 2 of a 4 part series on A Short History of Christianity and Science.  Pennsylvania Chautauqua, Mt. Gretna, PA.

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At my church, I’ve just started teaching an 8-week series on evangelism to my adult bible fellowship. I’m using the following working definition of evangelism:

Introducing nonChristians to the good news of Jesus Christ with an implied or explicit offer to respond

This definition is quite narrow on purpose — I want to focus on the act of sharing the gospel and inviting people to follow Jesus, rather than diffuse our discussion with other (important) forms of witness and service.

My definition, however, ignores the usually-necessary progress from being indifferent or even hostile to God to being ready to make a commitment to Jesus. Further, if we’re talking about evangelism in the academy, there are few opportunities where one can share the gospel and invite a response without violating academic integrity. As Daryl and Teri McCarthy of IICS are fond of saying, “If you’ve been hired to teach math, and you instead work as a missionary, you are stealing from the university.” How then do we share the gospel in the academy?

Doug Schaupp and Don Everts’ idea of thresholds of conversion (PDF) might offer some ideas. As outlined in their book I Was Once Lost: What Postmodern Skeptics Taught Us About Their Path to Jesus, these thresholds try to describe a series of steps to entering the kingdom in a postmodern culture, where the Christian meta-narrative is neither assumed nor trusted.

Thresholds of Conversion

1. From distrust to trust
2. From complacent to curious
3. From being closed to change in their life to being open to change
4. From meandering to seeking
5. From darkness to the kingdom of light

This series of thresholds — which might not be necessary for everyone, or even followed linearly — might open up some ideas for how evangelism might happen within the academy, rather than just on campus. For example, in his essay Being Open About Your Faith Without Turning People Off, University of Virginia professor Ken Elzinga shares several ways to build trust. I’ve heard other stories of faculty who earned an opportunity to share the gospel with a colleague because, after years of mutual trust, their friend came to a place of spiritual seeking and openness.

What do you think of these thresholds of conversion? Do you have any experience — or concerns — with evangelism within the structures of the academy?

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1.  How hard can an adjunct push? Would reading a piece such as Six Ways to Make Adjuncting More Effective and Fulfilling (Brian Croxall. Chronicle of Higher Education. 7/15/2010) been helpful for Kenneth Howell, who up until recently had an adjunct position at U. of Illinois where he was teaching about his Roman Catholic faith?  Check out how Teaching or Preaching (Scott Jaschik. Inside Higher Ed. 7/15/2010) and The Politics Of The Classroom: Is It Homophobic To Teach About The Scriptural Basis For Homophobia? (Tenured Radical.  7/13/2010), discuss Howell’s firing.   While reading, don’t miss how our guest blogger Janine Giordano Drake (advanced graduate student in the University of Illinois Department of History) enters the conversation with the Tenured Radical.  Note:  the Alliance Defense Fund has picked up Howell’s cause.

2. The Real Challenge for Higher Education. Do you think higher education receives significant challenge from the wider American culture.  If so, Why?  How would you (do you) seek to address concerns and implement change in your context?

To better understand America’s lack of a pervasive education culture, consider the fact that as a nation we generally don’t greatly value educated people and don’t seem to believe that being educated contributes to quality of life beyond that offered by greater economic success. — Garrison Walters. The Real Challenge for Higher Education. Inside Higher Ed. 7/15/2010.

3.  How Diversity Punishes Asians, Poor Whites and Lots of Others (Russell K. Nieli. Minding the Campus: Reforming the Universities. 7/12/2010). HT:  David.  He comments, “Later down in the particle they talk about how universities actually count points against students who come from farming (i.e. poor white) backgrounds, taking off points for 4H, FFA, etc.”

4. More on Miracles: Over at Scot McKnight’s Jesus Creed blog, regular blogger and university scientist RJS picks up on the same BioLogos’ series on miracles that Tom wrote about.

If miracles are arbitrary acts of imaginative supernatural showmanship the incredulity of Martin is understandable. But they are not.  And this connects with the essay by Pete Enns, looking at the incidents in the ministry of Jesus where he rebuked or calmed the sea. These were not arbitrary acts, magic tricks, or acts of convenience to make life easier. These were miracles with a purpose – where the impact could not be missed.

5. Improv for Change: Evangelical Christians have tried every other strategy for changing culture, so why not improvisational comedy? In the WSJ, Penn law professor David Skeel writes about an unusual training session – Veritas Riff – organized by some pretty big names in the next generation of evangelical leaders: Curtis Chang, Andy Crouch, Michael Lindsey, and Dan Cho of the Veritas Forum, who sponsored the event. Last month in Cambridge, MA, a small group of “evangelical thought-leaders” were trained in media relations, interviewing, and, yes, improv:

Then came our theatrical training, led by Marianne Savell, the director of Actors Co-op Theatre Company in Hollywood. It started tamely enough, with a game called zip-zap-zop. (One fellow pointed to another and said “zip,” the other pointed to a third and said “zap;” those who spoke before pointing or said the wrong word were ousted from the circle).

Sounds like fun! This being the 21st century, you can see a Flickr collection of photos from the Veritas Riff mini-conference.

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Way back in May 2009, Tom and I put together some thoughts on what we would blog about. Here’s what we came up with:

Academic vocation and calling: What’s the nature of the academic life? What’s the nature of the university – its systems, assumptions, problems, glories? And why would a person (specifically, a follower of Christ) follow an academic vocation? Does a Christian academic look, act, or live any differently from any other academic or any other Christian?

The role of faith and theology in specific academic disciplines: We’ll be looking at issues that arise when one takes faith, theology, and their academic discipline seriously. “Science and religion” is the pair most often discussed in mainstream and Christian media, but other disciplines – the humanities, social sciences, professions – are having discussions and controversies of their own. We encourage discussion on all of our posts, but in this theme especially, we seek your perspective as experts in your respective disciplines.

Spiritual formation in the academy: How do you nurture your relationship with God and your spiritual life in the midst of the university? Or, put another way, how can one be a Christian in the academy? We’ll be looking at Christian practices, spiritual disciplines, and resources to help you grow closer to Christ.

We also decided to post a Week in Review every Friday, with links to articles, books, and websites that we had been considering.

How have we done? Have we been faithful to our vision last May?

Just staying consistent, though, isn’t enough. (Hobgoblins of little minds and all that.)

Have we overlooked any topics or themes? What issues affecting your life as a Christian in the academy have we neglected? Is there anything that we need to spend less time on or drop altogether?

Leave your thoughts in the comments, or send them directly to me. Thanks!

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For InterVarsity staff, summer is a time to look back on the past academic year and prepare our plans for the coming year. I thought it might be good to do the same here on the ESN blog. Tomorrow, I’m going to ask what you think we ought to write about for the coming year, but today, I’m taking a look back.

Above: A word cloud of the ESN Blog’s most common tags, created with Wordle.

Our most popular articles over the past year reflected a variety of our top interests: graduate school, spiritual formation, living as a Christian in the academy.

1. Where did you find your megaphone? (Janine Giordano)
2. Best Books for Undergrads: Your Picks
3. Amish Grace & Pop Culture (Tom Grosh)
4. Bobby Gross: Living the Christian Year (me)
5. Keys of Thriving (Not Just Surviving) (Tom)
6. ESN Interview: Alissa Wilkinson (me)
7. On Fitting In-With the Scholarship (Janine)
8. Best Books for Graduate Students?
9. Supreme Court Rules Against CLS (me)
10. What’s the Best Way to Help Haiti? (me)

Note: These are just the most popular posts that we’ve written this past year. A few posts (What’s the purpose of the university?, Why Get a PhD in the Humanities?, Wendell Berry on the University, and Eugene Peterson on Wendell Berry) are perennial favorites.

For the past academic year (July 1, 2009 to June 30, 2010), here are a few stats about the ESN blog:

Tomorrow, I’ll be asking you what you think we ought to write about for the coming year. I look forward to hearing what you think!

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1. Continuing conflict over Creation: At the recent Ligonier Ministries national conference, Tough Questions Christians Face,Southen Baptist Seminary president Albert Mohler addressed the question, “Why does the Earth look so old?” (video) He challenged the position of Francis Collins, Karl Giberson, and the BioLogos Foundation that the Earth is billions of years old, which generated a series of responses from BioLogos, Glberson, and Peter Enns.

2. Looking for advise regarding the year after you’ve wrapped up your dissertation?  Here’s some tips/reflections on My First Year (Stephanie M. Foote. Inside Higher Ed. 7/2/2010). Foote is now the director of the Academic Success Center and First-Year Experience at the University of South Carolina at Aiken.

3. Undergraduates are WEIRD: Are we getting closer to our understanding of human nature or further away from it when behavioral-science research focus upon undergraduates?  That is the topic of Chronicle of Higher Education Perculator piece Why We’re All WEIRD ( 7/2/2010).  Anyone willing to make an assertion?

4. In his personal blog Corner Interactions, physics professor W. Brian Lane asks a good question: what should a church leader believe about your discipline? What are the applications of those beliefs, and what should remain open issues?

5. PhDs and Myers-Briggs: Tim Keel shares a great quote from NT Wright about the effect of your Myer-Briggs type on the ease/difficulty of getting a PhD:

In Myers-Briggs terms, it’s much, much easier to get a PhD in biblical studies if you’re a ISTJ. You’ll never do it if you’re an ENFP because you’ll never finish it. You’ll be having too much fun. But we need, we need, we need “N”s in this business as well as “S”s because we need big-picture hypotheses. It’s very difficult to do that at PhD level because your supervisors and examiners will want you to nail down all the details (and you have to do that) but we need these big hypotheses.

It’s a very interesting post, so be sure to read the whole thing.

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