Posted by Holly Ordway in Apologetics, Literary Apologetics | 2 Comments
Can Christian Scholarship Make a Difference?
I have a new piece up at Civitate: The City Online, a publication of Houston Baptist University. Read the whole piece at Civitate; here is a teaser:
Academic work is a lot like discipleship. You do the day to day work of writing (or pastoring) and publishing (or praying) and teaching (or preaching), and you may or may not ever see the way that your work makes a difference. But the leverage involved is enormous. Ideas can change the world. Good, true ideas, expressed well, can make a powerful difference for the Kingdom of God. And if those good, true, well-written words also open the door for others to do good work — and if the scholar is the kind of Christian who uses his own tremendous gifts to inspire others to serve Christ – and who encourages and teaches in word and example – then the effects are incalculable.
I can’t calculate the incalculable (I’m an English professor; I don’t even balance my checkbook) but I can say a little bit about why I believe Christian scholarship is vitally important — not in abstract language, not this time, but with one stellar example: Malcolm Guite.
Read the whole piece over at Civitate!
Thanks, Holly! Great teaser, great follow up link, and important topic. Not to mention, academics need encouragement just as much as we require humility :)
Thanks, Carolyn! And I agree — encouragement is essential!