Dick Wright and Dorothy Boorse recently celebrated the release of their co-authored text with students at Gordon.

Here’s how the publisher (Pearson Higher Ed) describes the text: “With dramatically revised illustrations, the Twelfth Edition of Environmental Science: Toward a Sustainable Future is even more student-friendly while retaining the currency and accuracy that has made Wright/Boorse a best seller. The text and media program continue to help students understand the science behind environmental issues and what they can do to build a more sustainable future, with further exploration of the hallmark core themes: Science, Sustainability, and Stewardship.”

The book’s new and updated edition—which was recently released—includes McKnight’s introduction, a new chapter on Jesus and money, and many revised and expanded ideas, sentences, paragraphs and chapters, based in part on feedback Russ received from readers.

In addition to exploring various ways the Son of Man lived as a human, Russ also writes about the importance and power of money in the life of Jesus and our own lives. “(This) was a much needed addition (in the book), especially when considering the influence of today’s culture of materialism. We need to see how Christ himself responded to the challenges money can present.”  Flesh-and-Blood Jesus was first published in 2008, and is one of many published works by Russ .

Tim Sherratt

As another semester comes to a close, Timothy Sherratt, professor of political science, reflects on a year filled with challenges and questions, both essential elements in the process of learning—and living. (His essay will appear in the upcoming edition of Capital Commentary published by the Center for Public Justice.)

At the Corner of Need and Calling

By Timothy Sherratt 

The academic year is ending. In the first year seminar course I teach, the spring semester picked up where the fall had left off, moving from character and the good life to consideration of community and justice. Students embarked on service projects in the City of Lynn, near in miles but far in cultural and economic distance.

The political backdrop to the semester saw the President inaugurated for a second term, sandwiched between the averted fiscal cliff and the looming sequester. Hopeful signs accompanied a renewed debate on firearms, occasioned by the atrocity at Sandy Hook, and on immigration, occasioned by predictions of electoral extinction for the G.O.P.

The semester ends on notes of tragedy and terror. Bombings at the Boston marathon. A political rather than a popular failure to take commonsense steps to restrict gun violence, even as some in Congress excoriate federal agencies for failing to intercept the makers of an IED. Closer to home, the community memorializes a freshman killed in a traffic accident and remembers a beloved professor taken by a heart attack at the peak of his powers. Referencing these events, one student declared with refreshing transparency, “Transience is suddenly becoming a very real issue.”

A common theme emerges in my students’ final papers. There is so much injustice and so much need. Am I in the right place, going to college? What is God calling me to do? All this time spent equipping; shouldn’t I be doing?

There are, I respond, certain problems with this view. The need is great, but it lies deeper and is more varied than the most visibly urgent concerns. Short-term missions and direct aid have their place. But have we asked ourselves how much difference good government could make in most of the places where the aid is destined?

Besides this, education cannot be reduced to equipping. To the Christian, the mind is not a luxury made available only to an elite but is instead integral to human living, securing our health in the largest sense against the reductionists of our age. It is the ballast that holds us fast against what George Steiner memorably termed, “the detergent tide of social conformity.”

But I sympathize with these nineteen-year-olds. Theirs are some of the right questions. The Christian life ought to be lived at the intersection of Need and Calling. Living it there creates an appropriate tension in a fallen world, one that helps us examine our vocations for evidence of cynicism or indulged self-interest.Short-term needs can tyrannize, however. To meet most needs, the seed must fall into the ground and die (John 12:24). The decision to “fall into the ground” of graduate study, or the laboratory, or seminary, of entry-level positions at the State House or even the long slog of undergraduate education, is not a decision to abandon need but to meet it for the long haul.

There is another dimension to calling, less individualized than that sought by my students. As I write these words, only a small fraction of eligible voters is predicted to vote in the primary elections for Massachusetts’ open Senate seat. Citizenship is a universal calling to permanent responsibility to meet needs that are always present, and if exercised faithfully, contributes to healthy communities.

My students’ musings came to life this spring on the occasion of another death, that of my colleague and friend, Professor David Lumsdaine. As I have written elsewhere, David was a polymath if ever there was one, his degrees ranging from mathematics to engineering to political science. Widely read and a devout believer, he had pursued an academic career and written works of considerable importance, notably his Moral Vision and International Politics. But his academic career was a Christian’s vocation. David located himself squarely at the corner of Need and Calling, pursuing scholarly research but also sacrificing it to the spiritual and intellectual needs of his students, who beat a path to his pastoral door.

Across many walks of life, his is an example to emulate.

Dr. Judith Oleson

Throughout Canada’s history, generations of Aboriginal children in Quebec were taken from their families and communities and sent to Indian Residential Schools funded by the federal government and run by churches. They were denied use of their language, cultural identity and traditions, and the devastating impact of that tragic policy is still seen throughout the culture today. That’s why the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) has begun holding community hearings throughout Quebec with its culminating national event in Montreal, Canada.

From April 24-27, Dr. Judith Oleson, associate professor of social work and director of Gordon’s  peace and conflict studies program whose scholarship includes public apologies and racial justice, will travel with four of her students enrolled in PCS 375 Conflict Transformation and Reconciliation to Montreal. Together, they’ll participate in Canada’s National Truth and Reconciliation Event.  

Here’s what Oleson said before the trip: “By going to the TRC, we’ll have the unique privilege of witnessing testimonies of First Nation survivors of cultural genocide due to government policies. We will be able to interview both survivors and church representatives while exploring the relationship between the TRC event, public apology and meaningful reconciliation processes.  Then during the second week of May, our students will present their initial findings for the Gordon community.  It really is an unprecedented experience for those of us interested in conflict and peace studies to engage in such primary research and to hear first hand the stories of those who endured such tragedies. I have no doubt that our students—Serene King, Alex Clark, Ronesha WIlliams and Anna Soukenik—attending this important historical event with me will be deeply affected by this exchange, as I have been every time I participate in these reconciliation efforts.  We are grateful and humbled for the opportunity.”  GCSA Student Conference Fund and The Initiative for the Study and Practice of Peace provided traveling funding for Oleson and her students.

Jeff Miller (c) with the cast of “Kingdom Undone.”

“Every Teacher-Artist’s Dream”    by Jeffrey S. Miller

I suspect fathers and mothers experience something similar when their kids joyfully choose to take up the professions to which they have given their lives.  Teachers certainly do when their students become their colleagues. But all the imagination in the world could not have prepared me for the deeply moving and richly satisfying experience of creatively collaborating with young artists I once badgered, criticized, prodded, cajoled, hassled, humored, reprimanded and—hopefully—nurtured when they were starting their professional journeys.  This was one of those rare moments of unexpected astonishment every teacher-artist should have, and one I will always treasure as evidence of God’s grace and confirmation.

Technically, it all started at Bethel College, now University, where I both earned my undergraduate degree and later taught in the Department of Theatre Arts.  I had plans to be a doctor but a wise professor named Rainbow, of all things, saw in me certain proclivities that would never fit with a life in medicine.  And though far too young and inexperienced, I was given an opportunity to hone my skills teaching and directing at Bethel just as I was completing graduate studies at the U of MN.  My earliest students were just a few years younger than me . . .Among the first was a musician/actor/writer of remarkable talent – Michael Pearce Donley – who helped develop the original production of Gloria for The Refreshment Committee, a theatre company I founded with my wife, Mary, and a cadre of amazing up-start mostly-Bethel artists whose commitment to a theatre of faith was infectious and unrelenting.  Michael later served as the Music Director for our live radio show, Sunday Nite, on the Skylight Satellite Network of KTIS.  But he’s best known now as one of the three original creators and performers of that “highly caffeinated comedy” Triple Espresso. 

Years after Michael, I was blessed with a wave of exciting and talented performers coming through the theatre arts department including Jeremiah Gamble and Vanessa Muras, who would later team-up both as husband and wife and form the company, Theatre For the Thirsty.  Jeremiah’s senior practicum project was a piece he wrote and performed call The Rough and the Holy, a one-man show featuring people who encountered Jesus.  He performs that show to this day.

Their college peers included actor and designer, Geoff Wold and costumer, Nadine Grant.  In addition to his degree from Bethel, Geoff graduated from the highly-regarded physical theatre program of the Dell ‘Arte Company of Blue Lagoon, CA, and has done lighting designs for companies in MN and beyond. Nadine went on to graduate school at the University of Missouri where her capstone design project won the national costuming award given by USITT.  She now teaches at Belhaven University in Jackson, MS. 

By 2007, I had been gone from Bethel a number of years, having spent some time with Lamb’s Players Theatre of San Diego before coming to Gordon.  During a sabbatical leave, Jeremiah and Vanessa hired me to direct My Name Is Daniel for their company and began talking to me about a bigger, future project that was based on the last days of Christ.  Many drafts and a week-long workshop later, Kingdom Undone was brought to the Southern Theatre in the unusually warm late winter, early spring of 2012.  And it brought together the script and music of the Gambles, the music direction and score of Michael P. Donley, the era-blending, richly textured costumes of Nadine Grant and the lush, haunting, evocative lighting of Geoff Wold.

As I sat watching the opening night performance of our remount of Kingdom Undone in the late winter, early spring of 2013, I was overwhelmed with just how fortunate I’ve been to experience something so full and rare.  Here I was in one of the loveliest and most sought-after small theatre spaces in the Twin Cities (my personal favorite), experiencing a provocative and inspiring take on a story of immense significance that I had directed in collaboration with the Gambles, Michael P. Donley, Geoff Wold and Nadine Grant – all originally my students and now my artistic collaborators!  How unusual is this?  Who gets to experience such joy and fulfillment?  I was overwhelmed with gratitude for this resounding time of artistic satisfaction and personal grace.

The strands of this tapestry and its multiple connections to artists from my past run deep and extend much further than Bethel. But the bracing and humbling experience of Kingdom Undone, collaborating with, learning from, being challenged by and working among such gifted artists (and former students) – what can compare, this side of heaven?                                         —J.S.M., March 19, 2013

The modern university owes much to religion’s influence throughout history. In fact, there’s a direct connection and ongoing influence, both of which have kept Tal Howard, professor of history and director of the Center for Faith and Inquiry, busy this spring.

Earlier this month, Howard gave a keynote lecture at the conference on “Religion and the Idea of the Research University” in Cambridge, England. In early May, he’ll present at a workshop hosted by Harvard’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study on a similar theme. And this July, he’ll travel to Oxford for a gathering of Templeton grantees for Templeton’s Religion and Innovation and Human Affairs grant initiative.

The initiative also made possible the upcoming conference at Gordon on November 14-16, 2013, “Protestantism? Reflections in Advance of the 500th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation,” for which the Center for Faith and Inquiry received a grant in collaboration with Dr. Mark Noll, University of Notre Dame.  Howard’s talks and work with Noll at the conference will culminate in a new book.

Stephen Smith, professor of economics, Bruce Webb, emeritus professor of economics, and their colleague Edd Noell of Westmont College, answer that question in their new book, “Economic Growth: Unleashing the Potential of Human Flourishing.” Published by AEI Press as part of its Values and Capitalism series, the authors offer “empirical evidence from the past two centuries showing the relationship between growth and human well-being, greater global income equality, and environmental improvements and sustainability. They make the case that economic growth is key to lifting societies from dire poverty to prosperity and holds the promise of sustaining unreached levels of human flourishing.”

Norm Jones

Often regarded as the most important play of the 20th century, Samuel Beckett’s classic existentialist tragicomedy Waiting for Godot is re-imagined in the hands of director and theatre arts professor Norman Jones. His production of the absurdist masterpiece emphasizes not the futility of human hope—as many productions are wont to do—but the “insidious nature of hope,” exploring how and why we continue to hope when it seems there is no hope left.

The Gordon College Department of Theatre Arts production of Waiting for Godot opens April 12, and performances will follow on April 13 and 16–20. All performances will begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Margaret Jensen Theatre at the Barrington Center for the Arts. Tickets may be purchased online.

“It is poignant, endearing, and surprisingly funny,” said Jones. “I was drawn to the characters’ desperate attempts to find meaning in an uncertain world.”

Notably, the cast includes two women in the roles of Pozzo and the boy, joining a small number of productions that have allowed women to take on any of the five male roles, which Beckett famously insisted be played by men.

The production features Gordon students Ryan Coil ’13 (Nashville, TN), Chloe Eaton ’15 (Santa Barbara, CA), Amelia Haas ’15 (Roslindale, MA), Luke Miller ’14 (Coopersburg, PA), and Taylor Nelson ’13 (Northwood, NH), as well as an original set designed by Salem State University professor Michael Harvey. 

Waiting for Godot is part of Gordon’s Celebration of the Arts, a week-long festßival of art exhibitions and performances with leading voices from across artistic disciplines, such as Gordon Lothlórien Distinguished Chair in Fine Arts Bruce Herman, film producer Ralph Winter, artist Makoto Fujimura, pianist Mia Chung, and theologian Jeremy Begbie.

Click HERE for the full schedule of events.

Useful Innovation: The Next Great Challenge for Liberal Arts Colleges

President Lindsay

By D. Michael Lindsay

“It’s happening all around us, and the higher education community needs to pay attention. More and more, young people today are looking to entrepreneurial opportunities as the way of advancing the common good. Whether starting an innovative non-profit or a socially conscious business, these emerging leaders are motivated to make a difference with their lives.

“I’ve seen it in my own community just north of Boston. Gordon College alum Sam Winslow, for example, recently founded Thirst Footwear, which will fund new wells in sub-Saharan Africa through every shoe purchase. Then there’s the Accessible Icon Project — a collaboration between faculty members Brian Glenney and Tim Ferguson-Sauder, current Gordon students, Cambridge artist Sarah Hendron, and the disability advocacy group Triangle — which is working to change public perceptions of disability through a more active, engaged visual representation of the ‘Handicap Symbol.’ Gordon College itself has recently partnered with Praxis Labs, an organization that supports the development of new social enterprises through mentoring and funding opportunities.

“An entrepreneurial spirit is thriving among the next generation. Yet in order to turn their ambition into action, today’s students will need a solid foundation that prepares them for the unique challenges and opportunities of entrepreneurship. This is where a strong liberal arts education can give young entrepreneurs a significant advantage.” READ THE REST OF PRESIDENT LINDSAY’S COLUMN.

Bruce Herman

Out of a dinner conversation between artists and friends, a unique collaboration of “poetry, paint and music” was born. QU4RTETS, a touring exhibit featuring the paintings of Bruce Herman, Gordon’s Lothlórien Distinguished Chair in Fine Arts, opens in the Gallery April 13 and runs through May 1. Here’s how Herman describes his work in his artist’s statement:

“My work here is painted in parallel form to T. S. Eliot’s Four Quartets—not as a direct illustration of specific lines. I’ve steeped in the beautiful language and imagery of the poem but avoided attempting a visual equivalent of Eliot’s text. I’ve tried rather to find a fitting means to respond, in the medium of paint, to the same realities that moved the poet.

“Eliot’s ideas on cultural memory have been a guiding light to me over the course of four decades as I’ve tried to bridge traditional figure painting and modern abstraction—looking for an objective correlative (Eliot’s term) in order to achieve significant emotion in painting. He emphasized the necessity of submitting oneself to tradition in order to make something authentically new, and this resonated deeply for me growing up in the 1960s, an era of massive cultural upheaval.

“In this collaboration with Mako Fujimura and Chris Theofanidis, I am addressing an old painterly tradition: the Four Seasons and Four Stages of life (implicit in Four Quartets). I’ve also interacted directly with Eliot’s use of the Four Elements—earth, air, fire, and water—especially as seen in ‘Little Gidding,’ in which Eliot employs Dante’s terza rima style to create a set of meditations on death and resurrection (‘This is the death of air’ or ‘This is the death of water and fire’). I’ve also tried to point toward the mysterious ‘fifth element’ (quintessence) known to the classical and medieval mind as the æther, that element believed to suffuse and enfold all things.

“Working with the rule of four, pointing toward the fifth element, I’ve laid out a gold and silver grid that is interwoven with every other layer of the paintings. This grid functions both as a time signature and, because of the unpredictability of the light reflections, as an emerging temporal narrative both inside and outside of the painting (the viewer completes the work with his or her reflection—in effect giving me a chance to disappear as author of the finished work). As the light changes or one passes in front of the image, the reflective surface of the gold and silver shifts, bending the light and invoking that liquid, spiritual light in which we live and move and have our being––the quintessence or presence of God.

“I’m grateful to Mr. Eliot for leaving behind a path I could follow in order to locate a place of ‘complete simplicity costing not less than everything,’ to bear witness to the very same hope that is repeated twice in the poem in the words of Julian of Norwich: ‘And all shall be well, and / All manner of thing shall be well.’ A costly hope that is only possible, in Eliot’s setting, ‘When the tongues of flame are in-folded / Into the crowned knot of fire / And the fire and rose are one.’”