The DeWeese-Boyd v. Gordon College case in Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) could impact anyone in Massachusetts who works at a religiously affiliated school or hospital, but the implications could be far broader. The dispute began with a disagreement about LGBTQ+ policies which is not uncommon. The private, evangelical Christian college asked the SJC essentially to rule that any Christian who works at a Christian institution is a ‘minister’ which would prevent normal rules about workplace discrimination from being applied. This SJC ruled that the associate professor of social work was not a “minister.”
I've been reading Islamic Imperialism: A History by Efraim Karsh. I didn't know anything about Islamic history when I started and still only have a vague understanding of the big picture. The names are unfamiliar so it is difficult to keep the cast of characters straight. The pages of unillustrated narrative haven’t helped me develop a timetable of the millennia or a big picture of developments, but I have a renewed appreciation of the difficulty that students have when studying history with a limited understanding of the context and little intrinsic motivation. I’m reading because I want to and have no time restraints. Students rarely have these advantages.
An excerpt from the book, Nature's Case for God, by theologian and philosopher, John Frame, reminded me how important a proper view of God's world is to the task of education. Schools primarily study various aspects of God's world so if we have a distorted picture of the purpose of created, physical reality, we will also have a distorted picture of the purpose of education. Frame asks, "Does natural theology violate sola Scriptura?" His answer resonates with me.
…the principle does not forbid us to seek knowledge of God from creation. Rather, Scripture itself tells us that God is revealed everywhere and that human beings are therefore under obligation, not only to hear God’s word in Scripture, but to obey his revelation in all creation."
Studying God's world cannot be separated from God's word, but neither can God's word be separated from God's world.
Peter Mommsen revisits Monty Python, Charles Darwin, and Maximus the Confessor in his article, "The Book of the Creatures" in Plough Quarterly, 28: Creatures, Summer Issue. He proposes that "when we forget how to read nature, we forget how to read ourselves." He is convinced that "the natural world is a book that reveals the divine, just as the book of scripture does." He revels in the beauty of nature but also grapples with the evidence of sin in creation that needs the redemption of Christ that Paul discusses in Romans 8. God's world does indeed reveal the God who created, redeemed, and sustains it.
I have less confidence that the ecological movement "can perhaps ride to the rescue" but he points to a reason that Christians should be committed to caring for God's world as His stewards:
"…millions of people worldwide re-learning to read the book of nature, even if only partially and imperfectly. Perhaps…we’ll again learn to decipher the signs of the Goodness behind nature – the one who is both author and subject of the book of the creatures, and who, in Alexander’s words, “gave us eyes to see them, and lips that we might tell how great is God Almighty who hath made all things well.”
It is possible to download an open source copy of Mark Elliott's, The Arduous Path of Post-Soviet Protestant Theological Education which considers thirty years of history with its successes and challenges. The changing relations with the church and state as well as the involvement of foreign faculty. Gordon-Conwell Professor Don Fairbairn describes it as "a rags-to-riches-to-rags tale, full of excitement and heartbreak…many lessons…about the transitory nature of political favor." The lessons learned from this analysis could be helpful as the global Body of Christ seeks to prepare leaders with a firm foundation in God's word that understand the times and know what their nation should do (1 Chronicles 12:32).
Page 6 of 8
By 
By 
By