As long as I have been in the field of English, the humanities have been in “crisis.”  (I’m not going to rehash that whole history here: google “crisis in the humanities,” and you get over 11 million hits).  But even a cursory reading of the history of the academy will show that it has basically always been thus.  Generation after generation has struggled to articulate the value of the liberal arts, has grappled with justifying the study of anything other than the purely practical.  And, of course, I don’t see that changing any time soon.  

I actually think faith-based colleges have a better shot than other institutions at answering the question—why the liberal arts—not only because they have a richer sense of vocation (so that a calling to any academic discipline, for example, is a holy calling), but also because of the theological perspective they hold about the nature of the world.  For me, C.S. Lewis in his marvelous “Learning in War-Time” (written during WW2) makes that point beautifully:

The war creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would never have begun. We are mistaken when we compare war with “normal life.” Life has never been normal.

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The question—can churches split?—reminds me of the bromide attributed to Samuel Clemens.

           Do you believe in infant baptism?
           Believe in it?  Hell, I’ve seen it!

The General Synod of my church—the Reformed Church in America—begins the day after tomorrow, Thursday, here in my town of Pella, Iowa. General Synod is the widest decision-making body of our church; the annual conclave of ministers, elders, and sundry other staff, groupies and hangers-on. Synod is part family reunion, part business meeting, and part promotional bonanza.

One of the more intriguing, perhaps controversial, items that will come before this year’s RCA General Synod is known as “R-16” (“R” for recommendation).

On the hottest, most divisive issues in the church, rarely do we really debate the issue itself. Instead, it becomes a matter of “polity” (how we structure ourselves). Are we true to our Constitution? Are we following our order? And on the issues surrounding LGBT inclusion in the church, it is happening again. I’m not quite sure what to think of this. Is this the church’s way of lawyering up? Or are we simply trying to fight fair?

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Yesterday I did something I hadn’t done in five years. I was pouring a bowl of cereal and a piece fell on the kitchen floor and I had to pick it up myself. Because, suddenly, I find myself bereft of the opportunistic canine who always helped keep the kitchen floor clean. 

In the first week of April, the Saturday after Easter actually, my sweet dog Fritz was diagnosed with lymphoma. He died two weeks ago, less than two months later. It’s been a rough time. In the five years since I adopted him from my brother’s friend, he’s been my constant companion, my sidekick through the ups and downs of life in Grand Rapids, Boston, and now Nashville. And I know I’m biased, but he really was an awesome dog, the kind of dog loved even by people who don’t like dogs. One of those calm, wise souls. He was a creature who truly never misbehaved and was always ready for the next adventure.

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People say, “Bless you!” when you sneeze. “Bless” has turned into a bit of a feeble word.

But in the Bible it’s much stronger. (And it has nothing to do with sneezing!)

When God promises to bless you, he is saying, “I’m going to make you into everything I ever meant for you to be!”

It means God is taking every day and every single thing that happens in it—good or bad—to make you stronger, to mend whatever is broken inside, to change you into the person you were always meant to be.

Just as a caterpillar is totally changed into a butterfly, being blessed means being totally transformed.

God is transforming everything—his broken world—and you.

Dana Daniels is the associate director of advancement at Western Theological Seminary. She is also involved in an RCA church plant, Embody Christ Fellowship, with husband Rev. Jim Daniels.

I have never read an Amish romance novel. I tried once—not very hard—and couldn’t do it, couldn’t even get past page three. However, I did just now manage to read with great delight, cover to cover, Valerie Weaver-Zurcher’s new book, The Thrill of the Chaste: The Allure of Amish Romance Novels. Unable to resist that delicious title, I dove into this fascinating cultural study of the Amish romance phenomenon, because, like anyone who follows the publishing industry, I want to know: why are readers so crazy about Amish romance?

This is a recent and feverish craziness. Weaver-Zurcher, a Mennonite whose expertise nicely straddles the academic and trade publishing worlds, explains that the Amish romance genre putted along at just a few new titles a year for the first few years of the millennium, but in 2008 this jumped to twelve new titles, then shot to 45 in 2010 and 85 in 2012. If you were so inclined today, you could purchase a new Amish romance title every four days (that’s the rate of release anyway). The top three Amish romance authors have together sold about 24 million books. And this analysis only accounts for “inspirational”—that is, “clean,” Christian—Amish romance released through publishing houses. It does not count figures for re-releases, self-published Amish romance, Amish fiction in other genres such as mystery, novels about other “plain” people such as Mennonites, or Amish/vampire novels, or LGBT-themed Amish fiction. Yes, there are such things. Not kidding.

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I stumbled on a incredible war story about Westkapelle, Zeeland, the Netherlands, in a book of World War II memories. Lots of folks from my hometown would, if they cared to, trace their roots to Westkapelle; in fact, I'm sure their respective phone books list many of the same surnames--Huibregste, DePagter, names on my own family tree. Oostburg, Wisconsin, where I was born and reared, is named after a Dutch hamlet close by, a part of the Netherlands some Dutch people still feel is, well, out of the way, and, yes, backward, its people reputedly quite ultra-religious.

Westkapelle is the westernmost point of the whole country, which explains why, even today, its sandy beaches are still littered with German fortifications built there when thousands of Nazi soldiers awaited what they thought would be an inevitable Allied invasion.

They weren't wrong.  If the Allies wanted to control the harbor at Antwerp, Belgium, they would have to come east from the island of Welcheren, whose westernmost point is the town of Westkapelle.

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“So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to Godself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.”

These words from 2 Corinthians 5:17-18 often show up in our Sunday morning liturgy. If not explicitly, say as part of the assurance of pardon, then certainly implicitly in some other aspect of worship. They speak of the resurrection and of our Easter hope. They speak of the gospel teachings of Christ. They speak of the prophet’s promise, of Isaiah’s vision of a peaceable kingdom, of new heavens and a new earth. They speak about change, transformation, and conversion that God is at work bringing about at the personal and the cosmic level. And they are invitational, summoning us as Christ’s disciples moved and motivated by the Spirit to be co-participants in this work, joining God in the mission of re-creation.

On good days the soundtrack that accompanies these words—because in my head, there’s always a soundtrack playing in the background—is something like Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come” or Dylan’s “Times They Are a-Changin” amongst a multitude of others. That’s on good days.

But the experience of change—and to be fair, there are a variety of kinds of change—but that experience is often challenging, and I believe that is especially true in the church, which is a little ironic.

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Yesterday, as I was in the air, flying from New York City to Michigan, the new Vampire Weekend song was on repeat. Have you heard it? If not, watch and listen first...

Is this a spiritual side of Vampire Weekend that we haven't encountered before? That's what Friday's article in Slate asked. With songs like Oxford Comma that declare who really cares how we express ourselves, with or without the oxford comma it is a song that praises telling the truth in whatever form it comes. Also, personally, a fun song to listen to. I, along with others, have been wondering if this is a song that is a reflection on the bands religious and/or spiritual life? That may be a stretch for a band who is sometimes looked at as the rich kids from New York City but I'm willing to stretch it.

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Growing up in the CRC there were certain hymns we'd sing from the old blue Psalter Hymnal that contained lines that always stuck with me.   The lines in question were not necessarily memory-worthy on account of their spiritual comfort so much as perhaps due to the oddity or strikingness of them.   In a hymn we often sang in connection to someone's profession of faith, for instance, there was a line that said "the world is ever near, I see the sights that dazzle, the tempting sounds I hear."   The idea was to renounce those things in favor of Jesus, of course, but every time we sang it, I as a fairly sheltered farm boy was highly curious to see a few of those dazzling sights myself some day.  (And then I'd denounce them . . .)

Another line from "The Church's One Foundation" claimed that "with a scornful wonder men see [the church] sore oppressed, by schisms rent asunder, by heresies distressed."  Something about that "scornful wonder" struck me, perhaps for its vaguely oxymoronic quality, partly perhaps because I'd never witnessed too many juicy heresies that elicited scornful wonder from anyone from outside my congregation.

Ideally, of course, the church should elicit some more positive form of wonder from the world, and I've heard tell of a couple such spectacles lately and I find them encouraging.

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The Big Boy is now an Indian restaurant in my little town.

I went back to that town where I spent most of my childhood last week.  It’s a stone’s throw north of Cincinnati, practically on the Mason-Dixon Line.  I lived there between 1964 and 1969.  I was dumb as a goat back then, a loose-limbed, wide-eyed, skinny kid who learned to read and write and do some arithmetic in those days.  Oh yeah, I learned one other thing -- seeing that Big Boy-turned-Indian restaurant reminded me of it.  I learned how to be a racist there.

It was in the humor: I can still see and hear Doug the Barber, standing with clippers in hand, regaling his patrons in his Kentucky drawl with the story about how he tried to get Virgil, the Chief of Police, to ride shotgun with him into the Cincinnati ghetto one night to put “Wallace for President” bumper stickers on cars.  That was a knee slapper.

It was in the fear: My dad asked Tom, who ran the Gulf station, why he had a rifle propped up in the corner of his gas station and Tom said, “In case any of those Negroes crawl up out of the city and try to take what’s mine.”  Except he didn’t say “Negroes.”  You know what word he used. 

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