A Research Breakthrough in Canadian Evangelicalism

It has been my honour to help guide the new Centre for Research on Canadian Evangelicalism (CRCE), a venture of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada.

The CRCE sponsors research, publishes its own journal (Church & Faith Trends), and helps journalists and researchers understand evangelicals better.

Now the CRCE has established a research tool  that, I believe, is unprecedented anywhere in the world. (Tell us, though, if there are other such tools.) It is a bibliography on Canadian evangelicalism that has been established using wiki technology. Only scholars can register to contribute (and we hope everyone in that category will do so), but anyone can use it.

This tool should save people hours, if not days, of research time. So visit the site if such research interests you, and please expand it if you have expertise to offer.

And congratulations to project manager Rick Hiemstra who put it together with help from EFC’s IT experts.

Qualifications for Teaching at a Small Christian College

Here is a lightly-edited example of the many e-mails I have received of this sort:

A friend of mine showed me your blog entries on PhD work (“Thinking about a Ph.D” was particularly helpful; thanks), and I was wondering if you had any advice specifically for someone who wants to teach at a smaller, Christian school (I love to teach, and while I enjoy it to a degree, research is definitely not my goal, especially in top-tier academic settings).

I am finishing up my BA in Liberal Arts and Culture at X College in Smalltown, USA, and am seriously thinking about getting my MA here as well. However, this is not a very attractive resume for PhD work, so I’ve emailed admissions at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School (TEDS), and they didn’t seem to think an MA from my college would be too detrimental to admissions into their PhD program (I would just need to take a few classes to get myself up to MDiv equivalency).

That’s TEDS, though, and I realize with this background I probably wouldn’t have a chance getting into universities like Duke or Princeton. So, do you think a PhD from a place like TEDS would be good for me, if I’m only wanting to teach at a small, Christian school? I’ve heard that teaching jobs are very scarce, so I don’t want to leave myself with a PhD and no job. At the same time, though, I want to teach in more conservative, evangelical circles, so it seems doing my coursework there would get me the connections I’d need for a job.

Also, should I be considering a degree from Aberdeen or Edinburgh, over a place like TEDS (or Calvin or Wheaton)?

Finally, what do you think of the doctorate program at Regent? I looked at it not too long ago, and it seemed more geared toward people already employed; would it be worth looking into given what I’m wanting to do? Thanks.

Why I Gave Up “Humility”

Humility is always fertile ground for jokes, isn’t it? A friend will mention an accomplishment, and before the rest of us can tease him, he’ll say something like, “And soon I’ll publish my book, Humility and How I Attained It.”

Other wits chime in: “You mean, Humility: My Early Years, don’t you?”

Or, “Perfection, the latest installment in the Sanctification saga?” And so on.

When I published a book called Humble Apologetics, my own friends predictably piled on: “Well, you know a lot about apologetics, so the book is probably at least half good.” And so on. And so on.

Opportunity and Responsibility in the Financial Crisis

North American Christianity faces twin crises these days. The first is a leadership crisis, and the second is a funding crisis. There seem to be a record number of Christian organizations seeking middle- and senior-level administrators. And a disturbing number suffer financial trouble—especially during the current financial downturn around the world.

Leading publications in both Canada and the United States are struggling financially, with sometimes desperate confusion about how the Internet is affecting them for better and for worse. And they keep looking for capable editors and publishers to help guide them through these parlous times.

New Bible schools, colleges, seminaries, and even universities continue to pop up, but a number of long-serving schools have closed or merged with others. (I heard about two closing just today.) Many of them face the daunting challenge of replacing senior officers (Do you know any excellent deans or presidents you can recommend?). A large part of the burden of those officers is raising and stewarding finances that seem perpetually to fall short of what is needed to fulfil the school’s mandate. Moreover, no one should underestimate the strain of living on—and trying to hire and retain good workers on—what are generally meager salaries.

This Week at Regent and UBC

For those of you in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia and particularly in the Vancouver area, here are a couple of events this coming week that might interest you.

Both are scheduled for Thursday, November 13.

1. “Must Scholarship Be Justified to the Poor?” I’ll be discussing this question with Dan Oudshoorn,  who has extensive experience with the Canadian streets and their people, both as a worker among them and as a former street person himself. Dan is a graduate of Tyndale College in Toronto and is a fine student here at Regent. He will argue the affirmative out of his reflection on theology and his experience among the poor. I will be arguing the negative, suggesting that God’s mission is not properly construed as being fundamentally about the poor, and therefore some activities, and scholarship in particular, can be justified without reference to them.

We’ll be stating our positions briefly, interacting with each other, and then going to the floor for further comment and question. Everyone is welcome: Regent College, Room 100, 11 a.m.

2. The Graduate and Faculty Christian Fellowship at UBC is sponsoring an event called “Multiculturalism in Canada: What Are We Talking About?” Prof. George Egerton, of UBC’s Department of History, will bring a short lecture on the social and political factors that led to the enshrinement of multiculturalism in the Canadian self-consciousness and the very cabinet of the federal government. I’ll be taking a quite different, philosophical, tack, arguing that the most popular form of current multiculturalist sentiment, what I call “multiculturalism as affirmation,” is incoherent and, ultimately, a severe form of hegemony.

Everyone is welcome: Woodward/IRC Lecture Hall 1 at 4 p.m.