This blog aims at fostering conversation among faculty members and others regarding the proper role, if any, of explicitly religious discourse in classrooms or in intra-faculty discussions and deliberations.
To promote these conversations, the blog will
- Aggregate news articles, opinion pieces, and postings from other bloggers
- Recommend and review relevant books and articles
- Post stories about “teachable moments” as well as “conversation stoppers”
- Offer occasional mini-essays on the advantages and pitfalls, the whens and hows, of allowing explicitly religious considerations into classroom or intra-faculty discussions
Please consider sending in:
- Teachable Moments: Anecdotes that illustrate the challenges and opportunities that arise when students or faculty bring explicitly religious considerations into the classroom.
- Conversation Stoppers: Anecdotes that illustrate the challenges and opportunities that arise when faculty raise explicitly religious considerations in conversations with each other or with administrators.
- Recommended Reading: Books, articles, postings that offer insight into the question of explicitly religious discourse on campus.
- Other: Other matters that have a bearing on this ongoing conversation.
Please send these to “markuedwards AT gmail DOT com. No spam please.” I may not post every suggestion, but I will reply. Thank you!
The Blogger
Mark U. Edwards, Jr. holds an A.B. (Psychology) and an M.A. and Ph.D. (History) from Stanford University. After three years as a Junior Fellow in the Michigan Society of Fellows, he taught history at Wellesley College (1974-1980) and Purdue University (1980-1987). In 1987 he became Professor of the History of Christianity at the Divinity School, Harvard University. In July, 1994, he became the ninth president of St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. In 2000 Edwards stepped down from the presidency and moved to New Hampshire. In May, 2003, he returned to HDS as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Special Programs, later Associate Dean for Academic Administration, and, since July 2007, as Senior Adviser to the Dean.
Edwards has written four books and numerous articles on Martin Luther and the German Reformation. The most recent book, entitled Printing, Propaganda, and Martin Luther (University of California Press, 1994; reprint: Augsburg Fortress, 2004), deals with the West’s first “mass media campaign” and Luther’s pivotal role as both subject and object in the struggle for the hearts and minds of sixteenth-century Christians.
While at St. Olaf, Edwards turned his research interests toward religious perspectives in American higher education. In addition to chapters and articles on this topic, Edwards has published Religion on Our Campuses: A Professor’s Guide to Communities, Conflicts, and Promising Conversations (Palgrave, 2006), which asks faculty to ponder the appropriate role, if any, of religion on campus.
This personal blog is intended to be a resource for on-campus conversations.
