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Books & Chapters

American higher education—historically and inherently—is a morally formative endeavor. Yet, in order to respond to America’s moral pluralism, higher education has increasingly taken a reductionistic approach to moral formation. Consequently, it abandoned the effort to supply students with moral expertise. Current approaches help students learn how to be excellent professionals and citizens, but they fail to provide the necessary tools for living the good life—in college and beyond.

Identity Excellence: A Theory of Moral Expertise for Higher Education addresses this problem by setting forth a multi-disciplinary theory of moral expertise for fostering moral excellence in an array of important identities. To this end, it teases apart the essential elements of what it means to be excellent in an identity before discussing the philosophical, sociological, psychological, and educational processes necessary for students to internalize traditions of identity excellence as part of their own moral identities. Overall, the emergent theory exposes the shortcomings in contemporary general education, professional ethics, and co-curricular education.

Finally, this book sets forth a bold but compelling vision for a more hopeful future for American higher education. As outlined within, such education involves teaching students’ excellence in the Great Identities, as well as how to prioritize and integrate their pursuit of identity excellence.

American educators have consistently splintered our humanity into pieces throughout higher education’s history. Although key leaders of America’s colonial colleges shared a common functional understanding of humans as made in God’s image with a robust but vulnerable moral conscience, latter moral philosophers did not build upon that foundation. Instead, they turned to shards of our identity to help students find their moral bearings. They sought to create ladies and gentlemen, honorable students, and finally, good professionals. As a result, fragmentation ensued as university leaders pitted these identity fragments against each other inciting a war of attrition.

As the war of identities raged, its effects spilled out beyond the bounds of the curriculum into the co-curricular dimension that struggled with moving beyond being en loco parentis. The major identity they cultivated was that of being a political citizen. Thus, the major identity and story of students’ lives became the American political story of democracy—what I call Meta-Democracy. In higher education guided by Meta-Democracy, students lose their autonomy to administrators who reduce the student identities they try to develop along with the range of virtues that comprise the good life. The Dismantling of Moral Education: How Higher Education Reduced the Human Identity explains why and how we arrived at diminishing ourselves.

Created to Become… Guided by God

Colleges today are filled with talk about identity and identity politics. But Glanzer shifts the conversation in Identity in Action by focusing on something one rarely hears anyone mention-the idea of identity excellence.

In various professions, identity excellence means becoming an excellent accountant, biologist, social worker, or teacher. But professors rarely go farther to talk about the identities that really matter to students.

What does it mean to be
– an excellent friend?
– a good neighbor?
– a steward of one’s body, possessions, or the environment?

And what about social identities? How does Christianity impact
– how I think about race?
– or gender?
– or citizenship?

Identity in Action, empowers readers to be excellent– and think deeply about the “why” questions of life in a practical, theologically informed manner. With personal stories and expert research, Glanzer explains how students can untangle the confusion and integrate their core identities with excellence.

How does the Christian faith inform Christian student affairs practice? How should it? Instead of placing Christ outside the realm of education, Christ should serve as the motivating and animating force for all of Christian student affairs. With Christ at the center of education, the Christian story distinctly transforms the nature of the work education professionals do. With research from a national mixed-methods study, Christ-Enlivened Student Affairs avoids the common response of anecdotal evidence by providing a catalog of some of the best thinking and practices in the field. Glanzer, Cockle, Graber, and Jeong use the framework of educational philosophies to trace how Christianity animates the who, why, what, and how of student affairs, offering evidence-based resources, and new tools for engaging new practitioners in the field, and a larger theological perspective for Christian student affairs.

Hundreds of thousands of professors claim Christian as their primary identity, and teaching as their primary vocational responsibility. Yet, in the contemporary university the intersection of these two identities often is a source of fear, misunderstanding, and moral confusion. How does being a Christian change one’s teaching? Indeed, should it?

Inspired by George Marsden’s 1997 book The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship, this book draws on a survey of more than 2,300 Christian professors from 48 different institutions in North America, to reveal a wide range of thinking about faith-informed teaching. Placing these empirical findings alongside the wider scholarly conversation about the role of identity-informed teaching, Perry L. Glanzer and Nathan F. Alleman argue that their Christian identity can and should inform professors’ teaching in the contemporary pluralistic university. The authors provide a nuanced alternative to those who advocate for restraining the influence of one’s extra-professional identity and those who, in the name of authenticity, promote the full integration of one’s primary identity into the classroom. The book charts new ground regarding how professors think about Christian teaching specifically, as well as how they should approach identity-informed teaching more generally.

Demonstrates how students and educators can resist narrow, utilitarian views of higher education’s purpose.

While the search for meaning and purpose appears to be a constant throughout human history, there are characteristics about our current time period that make this search different from any other previous time, particularly for college students. In this book, Perry L. Glanzer, Jonathan P. Hill, and Byron R. Johnson explore college students’ search for meaning and purpose and the role that higher education plays. To shed empirical light on this complex issue, the authors draw on in-depth interviews with four hundred college students from different types of institutions across the United States. They also analyze three sets of national survey data: the National Study of Youth and Religion, College Students Beliefs and Values, and their own Gallup-conducted survey of 2,500 college students. Their research identifies important social, educational, and cultural influences that shape students’ quests and the answers they find. Arguing against a utilitarian view of education, Glanzer, Hill, and Johnson conclude that colleges and universities can and should cultivate and aid students in their journeys, and they offer suggestions for doing so.

Has the American university gained the whole world but lost its soul? In terms of money, prestige, power, and freedom, American universities appear to have gained the academic world. But at what cost? We live in the age of the fragmented multiversity that has no unifying soul or mission. The multiversity in a post-Christian culture is characterized instead by curricular division, the professionalization of the disciplines, the expansion of administration, the loss of community, and the idolization of athletics. The situation is not hopeless. According to Perry L. Glanzer, Nathan F. Alleman, and Todd C. Ream, Christian universities can recover their soul―but to do so will require reimagining excellence in a time of exile, placing the liberating arts before the liberal arts, and focusing on the worship, love, and knowledge of God as central to the university. Restoring the Soul of the University is a pioneering work that charts the history of the university and casts an inspiring vision for the future of higher education.

This book offers a fresh report and interpretation of what is happening at the intersection of two great contemporary movements: the rapid growth of higher education worldwide and the rise of world Christianity. It features on-site, evaluative studies by scholars from Africa, Asia, North America, and South America.

Christian Higher Education: A Global Reconnaissance visits some of the hotspots of Christian university development, such as South Korea, Kenya, and Nigeria, and compares what is happening there to places in Canada, the United States, and Europe, where Christian higher education has a longer history. Very little research until now has examined the scope and direction of Christian higher education throughout the world, so this volume fills a real gap.

In 1975, Arthur F. Holmes published The Idea of a Christian College. At the time he could not have imagined his book would gather such a large following. This work’s thoughtful yet accessible style made it a long-standing choice for reading lists on Christian college and university campuses across the country and around the world. Countless numbers of first-year students have read and discussed his book as part of their introduction to the Christian college experience. However, enough has changed since 1975 in both the Church and Academy to now merit a full-scale reexamination. In this book, Todd C. Ream and Perry L. Glanzer account for changes in how people view the Church and themselves as human agents, and propose a vision for the Christian college in light of the fact that so many Christian colleges now look and act more like research universities. Including topics such as the co-curricular, common worship, and diversity, Ream and Glanzer craft a vision that strives to see into the future by drawing on the riches of the past. First-year students as well as new faculty members and administrators will benefit from the insights in this book in ways previous generations benefitted from Arthur Holmes’s efforts.

Taking Every Thought Captive celebrates forty years of the Christian Scholar’s Review by collecting a representation of the best scholarship to appear in its pages from inception in 1970 through 2010.

Over its forty years of publication, CSR has had two main objectives: ”the integration of Christian faith and learning on both the intra- and inter-disciplinary levels” and ”to provide a forum for the discussion of the theoretical issues of Christian higher education.” The twenty-four articles gathered in this anniversary collection reflect both of these objectives. As a whole, this collection witnesses to the rigors of the intellectual enterprise found within the pages of CSR and affirms an ongoing commitment to support, enhance, and promote Christian scholarship.

Contributors include: Carl F. H. Henry, Arthur F. Holmes, George Marsden, Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, Stanley Hauerwas, Richard J. Mouw, Mark A. Noll, Dallas Willard, Elizabeth Newman, Roger Lundin, Nancy Ammerman, Nicholas Wolterstorff, and fifteen others.

This book offers examples from both Christian and secular democratic institutions of higher education and then responds to possible criticisms about how moral education in a comprehensive humanist moral tradition may short change diversity, autonomy and critical thinking.

In the twenty-first century, religious faith has reemerged from the margins of modernism and moved back to the center of contemporary scholarly conversations. “When Jacques Derrida died,” Stanley Fish recently wrote, “I was called by a reporter who wanted to know what would succeed high theory and the triumvirate of race, gender, and class as the center of intellectual energy in the academy. I answered like a shot: religion.” A group of evaluators of the Lilly Endowment’s Initiative on Religion and Higher Education recently agreed. “There is today more discussion about the role of religion in the academy than at any time in the past 40 years and more commitment to the project of Christian higher education than there was just ten years ago.”

In recognition of these developments, this particular monograph offers an overview of the various ways conversations about religion and religiously informed scholarship are increasing in the academy. Although a growing number of faith traditions are finding their place in this conversation, the Christian tradition in its various forms is still the dominant voice. This monograph addresses the history of secularization in American higher education and scholarship; the historical and resistance by dominant religious traditions to that secularization; the contemporary ways that individual scholars, networks, and institutions approach the question of religious faith and scholarship; the concerns such a question raises for academic freedom; and the relationship between religious faith and scholarship.

American Educational Thought: Essays from 1640-1940 contains primary source readings from the mid 1600s to 1940. The goal of the work is to provide teachers, contemporary scholars of education, and policymakers with the most significant arguments made on the subject of American education during this time period. In this second edition of the book, the editors have included numerous new works that open up new possibilities for discussion, represent more wide-ranging viewpoints, and provide even richer context for making sense of American educational thought.

This account of the CoMission–a group of 83 Christian organizations formed to instruct Russian public school teachers in how to teach Christian ethics–provides unique insights both into postcommunist Russia and Western evangelical movements. Interviews with over 100 people intimately involved in Russian education, politics, and evangelism make the narrative’s analysis thorough, accessible, and personal. The author’s comprehensive research and first-person experience result in an informative, instructive, and compelling book.

Book Chapters

The Wiley Handbook of Christianity and Education provides a resource for students and scholars interested in the most important issues, trends, and developments in the relationship between Christianity and education. It offers a historical understanding of these two intertwined subjects with a view to creating a context for the myriad issues that characterize—and challenge—the relationship between Christianity and education today.

“How Christian Faith Can Animate Teaching: A Taxonomy of Diverse Approaches”

This book provides new insights on the unique role of doctoral students and new faculty as they join other stewards of the academy working within Christian higher education. Weaving together a variety of voices—graduate students, pastors, and seasoned scholars—the book examines the Christian university’s relationship to the Church and how faith and stewardship can guide the pursuit of teaching and scholarship.

“The Grand Quest Essential to Whole Person Education: Discovering Our True Identity”

Whole Person Education: Sino-West Dialogue

“Creating Confessional Colleges and Universities that Confess”*

*reprint of earlier International Journal of Christianity and Education article

Christianity and the Secular Border Patrol: The Loss of Judeo-Christian Knowledge centrally looks at how secular universities have dominated academic knowledge on the one hand and have also been a part of bias against Christian academics on the other. Authors generally ask for borders of understanding and collegial dialogue to bridge gaps of knowledge that exist because of this bias. Theoretical analysis and narratives from the field describe how overcoming extreme theoretical positions may allow for productive knowledge construction and a more harmonious relationship within the culture wars of our times, especially in higher education.

“Taking the Tournament of Worldviews Seriously in Education: Why Teaching about Religion Is Not Enough”**

“Finding the Gods in Public School: A Christian Deconstruction of Character Education”**

**reprints of earlier Religion and Education journal articles

The intersection of education and religion raises complex questions and provokes heated—sometimes fraught—debates. Fundamentally, what is the role of religious education in national curricula? And how especially does religious education work in countries that seek explicitly to separate church from state? What is the relationship between research and classroom practice? And what of religious education in non-school settings? What place should so-called faith schools (such as Brooklyn’s Khalil Gibran International Academy) have in modern plural societies? And, more broadly, how far should publicly funded education officials seek to accommodate the views and feelings of religious communities?

This new four-volume Routledge collection addresses these and other controversies. Edited by two leading scholars, Education and Religion meets the need for an authoritative reference work to codify and make sense of the field’s burgeoning literature. The editors have drawn on the most important and influential research from a broad range of countries and perspectives to create a one-stop ‘mini library’.

With comprehensive introductions to each volume, newly written by the editors, Education and Religion is an essential addition to Routledge’s Major Themes in Education series. It is destined to be valued by educationalists and scholars working in related areas as a vital reference and research tool.

To maintain the quality of education, integrity and honesty must be upheld by students and teachers in learning environments. The prevention of cheating is a prime factor in this endeavor.

The Handbook of Research on Academic Misconduct in Higher Education is a pivotal reference source for the latest scholarly material on the implementation of policies and practices to inhibit cheating behaviors in academic settings. Highlighting emerging pedagogies, empirical-based evidence, and future directions, this book is ideally designed for professionals, practitioners, educators, school administrators, and researchers interested in preventing academic dishonesty.

“The Heart of Purpose: The Major Difference behind Students’ Answers to One of Life’s Biggest Questions”

The reshaping of our cultural and social landscape continues, creating unprecedented opportunities. But one question remains: Is a life of faith worth embracing?

A Faith for the Generations explains how a Christian campus, a classroom, or even a simple mentoring relationship can flourish and serve in passing on faith to today’s emerging adults.

The essays included in this monograph cover a variety of topics related to the theme originally addressed at the 2014 Taylor University Higher Education Symposium: “A Faith for the Generations: How Collegiate Experience Impacts Faith.” After this brief introductory chapter, the monograph—as did the symposium—begins with an interview with Christian Smith, previously noted as a key voice in the current dialogue regarding emerging adult spirituality. This interview is not only insightful, but it also creates an excellent context for what follows in subsequent chapters.

“Christian Higher Education”

Christianity regards teaching as one of the most foundational and critically sustaining ministries of the Church. As a result, Christian education remains one of the largest and oldest continuously functioning educational systems in the world, comprising both formal day schools and higher education institutions as well as informal church study groups and parachurch ministries in more than 140 countries. In The Encyclopedia of Christian Education, contributors explore the many facets of Christian education in terms of its impact on curriculum, literacy, teacher training, outcomes, and professional standards. This encyclopedia is the first reference work devoted exclusively to chronicling the unique history of Christian education across the globe, illustrating how Christian educators pioneered such educational institutions and reforms as universal literacy, home schooling, Sunday schools, women’s education, graded schools, compulsory education of the deaf and blind, and kindergarten.

With an editorial advisory board of more than 30 distinguished scholars and five consulting editors, The Encyclopedia of Christian Education contains more than 1,200 entries by 400 contributors from 75 countries. These volumes covers a vast range of topics from Christian education:

  1. History spanning from the church’s founding through the Middle Ages to the modern day
  2. Denominational and institutional profiles
  3. Intellectual traditions in Christian education
  4. Biblical and theological frameworks, curricula, missions, adolescent and higher education, theological training, and Christian pedagogy
  5. Biographies of distinguished Christian educators

This work is ideal for scholars of both the history of Christianity and education, as well as researchers and students of contemporary Christianity and modern religious education.

With twenty-somethings delaying their entry into adult roles of marriage and parenthood, the question emerges: What and how are they doing? Are they flourishing or floundering? As shown in Barry and Abo-Zena’s edited volume, emerging adults in the United States are often in active pursuit of making meaning of their lives. Indeed, emerging adults are exposed to a wider variety of religious and spiritual beliefs systems through their extended families, peers, religious communities, universities, and the media. Consequently, many emerging adults in the United States choose to sample from a variety of traditions rather than maintaining their childhood religious doctrine. In their introduction in Part I, Barry and Abo-Zena situate emerging adults within the full life span and in a wide variety of contexts. Since maturation coincides with entry into complex social lives, emerging adults are ripe for heightened religious and spiritual exploration. In Part II, how and what religious and spiritual development looks like across the third decade are described followed by a discussion of the benefits and detriments of religiousness and spirituality. In Part III, the role of religious and spiritual socializing agents (parents, peers, and media) as well as particular contexts (American law, religious communities, and universities) on emerging adults’ religiousness and spirituality are considered. In Part IV, the variations of religiousness and spirituality are discussed concerning gender, heterosexual sexuality, sexual minorities, culture, and the unaffiliated. Lastly, in Part V, Abo-Zena and Barry specify ways that scholars can advance this research, followed by providing implications for practitioners, parents, and emerging adults themselves.

“Resurrecting Universities with Soul: Christian Higher Education in Post-Communist Europe”

“Will the Parent Abandon the Child? The Birth, Secularization and Survival of Christian Higher Education in Western Europe”

“Conclusion”

This book offers a fresh report and interpretation of what is happening at the intersection of two great contemporary movements: the rapid growth of higher education worldwide and the rise of world Christianity. It features on-site, evaluative studies by scholars from Africa, Asia, North America, and South America.

Christian Higher Education: A Global Reconnaissance visits some of the hot spots of Christian university development, such as South Korea, Kenya, and Nigeria, and compares what is happening there to places in Canada, the United States, and Europe, where Christian higher education has a longer history. Very little research until now has examined the scope and direction of Christian higher education throughout the world, so this volume fills a real gap.

“Educating for the Good Life”

Ideas about education have consequences. This book, edited by Matthew Etherington, provides readers with ideas and insights drawn from fifteen international scholars in Christian thought within the fields of philosophy, theology, and education. Each author responds to the philosophical, historical, and sociological challenges that confront their particular line of educational inquiry. The authors offer a view of Christian education that promotes truth, human dignity, peace, love, diversity, and justice. The book critically analyzes public discourse on education, including the wisdom, actions, recommendations, and controversies of Christian education in the twenty-first century. This timely book will appeal to those concerned with Christian perspectives on education, Aboriginality, gender, history, evangelism, secularism, constructivism, purpose, hope, school choice, and community.

“The Resurrection of Protestant Higher Education in Europe”

Confessionality and University in the Modern World

“Who Are We to Form Students? The Importance of Remembering Who We Are”

A groundbreaking work on holistic spiritual formation in Christian higher education.

Contemporary Christian universities claim that students grow spiritually while enrolled, yet very little work has been done exploring the influences of various parts of the university on student spiritual formation, especially, but not limited to, the impact of faculty. Building a Culture of Faith addresses the unique role faculty and others play in student spiritual formation, including historical and contemporary approaches; sets out a framework for understanding spiritual formation as it is practiced in the Christian university; and provides practical models for the roles the university plays in the spiritual formation of students.

 “Educational Freedom and Human Rights: Exploring the Tensions between the Interests and Rights of Parents, Children and the State”

Over twenty years after the 1989 UN General Assembly vote to open the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) for signature and ratification by UN member states, the United States remains one of only two UN members not to have ratified it. The other is Somalia. Child Rights: The Movement, International Law, and Opposition explores the reasons for this resistance. It details the objections that have arisen to accepting this legally binding international instrument, which presupposes indivisible universal civil, political, economic, social, and cultural rights, and gives children special protection due to their vulnerability. The resistance ranges from isolationist attitudes toward international law and concerns over the fiscal impact of implementation, to the value attached to education in a faith tradition and fears about the academic deterioration of public education. The contributors to the book reveal the significant positive influence that the CRC has had, despite not being ratified, on subjects such as educational research, child psychology, development ethics, normative ethics, and anthropology. The book also explores the growing homeschooling trend, which is often evangelically led in the US, but which is at loggerheads with an equally growing social science-based movement of experts and ethicists pressing for greater autonomy and freedom of expression for children. Looking beyond the US, the book also addresses some of the practical obstacles that have emerged to implementing the CRC in both developed countries (for example, Canada and the United Kingdom) and in poorer nations. This book, polemical and yet balanced, helps the reader evaluate both positive and the negative implications of this influential piece of international legislation from a variety of ethical, legal, and social science perspectives.

“The Death and Resurrection of Protestant Higher Education in Europe”

“Protestant Higher Education around the Globe: The Worldwide Spread and Contemporary State of Protestant Higher Education”

Since their earliest days, institutions providing a Protestant education have always been respected and sought-after for their rigor and relative freedom from dogma—and despite today’s secularism and plurality, they remain so. This international handbook is the ultimate companion to protestant schooling worldwide. Its 39 chapters form the most comprehensive and wide-ranging treatment of the subject yet available, addressing Protestant education on all six inhabited continents and featuring the perspectives of leading authorities and public figures.

The contributions cover in detail not only the facts and features of Protestant schooling in sundry nations, but also integrate a range of themes common to them all, themes so vital that they are of central concern to Christians around the world and of whatever denomination. Some of these topics are school choice, globalization, Bible pedagogy and character education, the fine arts, parental involvement, and the rise of Christianity in previously inaccessible locations such as China.

The handbook’s stellar list of authors is a Who’s Who of authorities on the subject and includes a renowned American evangelical, a former historian of the US House of Representatives, and White House consultants responsible for framing legislation. The many contributors from outside the USA are leading academics conducting seminal research on numerous topics in the field. Both exhaustive and authoritative, The International Handbook of Protestant Education will be an invaluable asset to educators, ministers, parents, policy makers political leaders of any denomination—or none.

“Taking the Tournament of Worldviews Seriously in Education: Why Teaching About Religion is not Enough”*

*reprint of earlier Religion and Education journal article

Both sacred and secular worldviews have long held a place in U.S. higher education, although non-religious perspectives have been privileged in most institutions in the modern era. Sacred and Secular Tensions in Higher Education illustrates the importance of cultivating multiple worldviews at public, private, and faith-based colleges and universities in the interest of academic freedom, and intellectual and moral dialogue.

Contributors to this edited collection argue that sacred perspectives are as integral to contemporary higher education in the United States as the more dominant secular perspectives. The debates and issues addressed in this book attempt to rebalance the dialogue and place an emphasis on pluralism, rather than declare victory of one paradigm over the other. Student affairs administrators, higher education and religious studies faculty, and campus ministers and chaplains will benefit from better understanding the interplay of these sometimes competing and sometimes complementary ideas on campus, and the impact of the debate on the lives of faculty, students, and staff.

“Religion and Education in Post-Communist Russia: Russia’s Evolving Church-State Relations”***

***reprint of earlier chapter

Religion and Politics in Multicultural Europe: Perspectives and Challenges

“Religion and Education: Russia’s Evolving Church-State Relations”****

****reprint of 2007 Journal of Church and State article

A survey of articles by leading specialists on various issues relating to religion and politics in contemporary Russia, including Orthodoxy, civil society, Islam, education, and extremism.

“Response to Tom Larney & George A. Lotter”

A survey of articles by leading specialists on various issues relating to religion and politics in contemporary Russia, including Orthodoxy, civil society, Islam, education, and extremism.

“Nonviolence in Social and Global Education: A Pedagogy for Peace”

The culture of violence has gained a religious colouring in modern days. With a destructive technological impetus, the question arises: Is there abuse of religious teachings? Is their any religious basis for violence and war? Then follow questions about the purpose of religion and the significance of concepts of peace and non-violence. As some find justification for war and violence in their religion, an inquiry must be made about the influence of religious scriptures on peace. Globalisation has had a varied impact on political, social, cultural, and religious behavioural systems. This landmark volume attempts to comprehend the concepts of non-violence and peace within different religious and cultural traditions.

“Russian Orthodoxy, the Russian Ministry of Education and Post-Communist Moral Education”