By: Elysse Burns on March 27, 2025
Bias is a deeply human experience. In Sway, Pragya Agarwal explores how bias, when misdirected, can lead to prejudice and discrimination against certain groups or communities.[1] She specifically examines implicit, or unconscious, bias, distinguishing it from explicit bias, while acknowledging that both can manifest in similar ways through discrimination and injustice. Her goal is to…
By: Joel Zantingh on March 27, 2025
Pragya Agarwal’s book Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias reminded me of the time a few years ago when I took the Implicit Association Test (IAT) from Harvard’s Project Implicit. With my conviction that all people are created in the image of God and are equally worthy of love and life, I thought I would achieve neutrality.…
By: Noel Liemam on March 23, 2025
Introduction. What is postmodernism? Postmodernism covers a broad range of topics from architecture to philosophy. In fact, it is described as, “Postmodernism is the late 20th century movement in Western philosophy marked by skepticism, subjectivism, and relativism. It challenges the idea of objective truth and emphasizes the role of ideology in shaping in shaping political…
By: Debbie Owen on March 22, 2025
We arrived in Old Havana on a Saturday evening, only to find the city gripped by a nationwide power outage that had begun the previous day. The streets—full of rubble and trash, as always—were (we were told) unusually quiet, with none of the regular bustling activity you would expect in a city on a Saturday…
By: Julie O'Hara on March 21, 2025
Nobody knew the speakers at the district leadership retreat in October 2021. The District Superintendent who invited them had since moved on. The assembled group expected equipping for evangelism from a former pro sports athlete, but at the opening session, his wife spoke. Her topic was postmodernism and its impact on the church. Her remarks…
By: Kari on March 21, 2025
“We used their banana trees,” I responded to whether we had found a place to “faire les besoins.”[1] Our medical evangelical team was caravaning back to the city after a week in the interior. A few vehicles were delayed, so we pulled over and took advantage of the jungle around us. We had stopped in…
By: Shela Sullivan on March 20, 2025
Introduction In a world where reason and truth are under constant scrutiny, Postmodernism emerges as both a critic and a challenger to the Enlightenment’s legacy.[1] In Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, Stephen R.C. Hicks debates that Postmodernism developed as a reaction to the failures of earlier ideas like the Enlightenment and…
By: Daren Jaime on March 20, 2025
In college, I remember the anxiety surrounding two semesters of philosophy and how many times I wanted to drop out of the course with the quickness. The problem, what I labored intently to retain, fell to the ground with expediency shortly after grasping the content. Despite my endless excavation into the subject matter and a…
By: Diane Tuttle on March 20, 2025
Before even getting to page one, philosophy professor, Stephen Hicks, Ph.D. let his reader know his thesis: The failure of epistemology made postmodernism possible, and the failure of socialism made postmodernism necessary[1]. Knowing that, I anticipated the reading of this book to be a clear and flowing experience. It was anything but that. Philosophy has…
By: Chad Warren on March 20, 2025
To quote blues musician Elmore James, we are “standing at the crossroads.” On one side, defenders of reason and individual freedom argue that the achievements of the Enlightenment—scientific progress, human rights, and democratic governance—are under threat. Conversely, a growing chorus claims these ideals have undermined community life, fostering alienation, moral relativism, and social decay. Two…
By: Christy on March 20, 2025
Last weekend, I had a friend share their struggle with not understanding God’s sovereignty and what happens to people who have never heard the gospel. While we didn’t get into a deep theological discussion, I did try to encourage them by sharing that I find peace in knowing that some things are just a mystery,…
By: Elysse Burns on March 20, 2025
Recently, I had the privilege of hearing Dr. Lamma Mansour speak at the George Fox Woolman Peacemaking Forum on Bearing Witness: A Christian Palestinian Cry for Justice and Peace. One moment stood out during the Q&A when a frustrated man voiced concerns about evangelical responses to the Gaza situation. Dr. Mansour, instead of offering a…
By: Graham English on March 20, 2025
I have been in two minor earthquakes that left me safe but scared. Both were strong enough to shake the house, rattle pictures off walls, and break dinnerware. Once they were over, while they did cause momentary anxiety, life continued as normal. Neither was even close to being as life-altering as the big earthquakes that…
By: Joel Zantingh on March 20, 2025
In reading, Stephen Hicks, Explaining Postmodernism: Scepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault, one gets a clear sense of the amount of time it takes to root ideas into the very fabric of a society. What started in the 1950s and 1960s among French philosophers [1], became the University texts in the 1990s and early…
By: Glyn Barrett on March 20, 2025
Stephen Hicks’ book, Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault [1] takes the reader on a deep dive into the origins of postmodernism, tracking its philosophical development and highlighting its connections to Marxist ideology. As someone who values Judeo-Christian principles and upholds the Bible as the Word of God, I find his analysis…
By: Adam Cheney on March 19, 2025
The village I lived in along the southern coast of Kenya had a socialist nature to it. Within that village, commodities were communal and meant to be shared. If I bought a ladder, it naturally was for the collective use of the entire village and can be returned to me upon request. There was a…
By: Jennifer Eckert on March 19, 2025
For nearly a decade in the fifties, American television showcased the comedy sitcom I Love Lucy, which remains an icon and one of the most beloved shows ever. In the starring role, Lucille Ball plays Lucy Ricardo, a silly and lovable housewife who gets herself into ridiculous and humorous situations. The line, “Lucy, you have…
By: Jeff Styer on March 17, 2025
I have had two formal philosophy courses in my life. The first one, Critical and Creative Thinking, focused on logic. The second, Introduction to Philosophy was taught by a former Nazi soldier with a thick German accent that was difficult to understand. Based on these two courses, I failed to develop a love of philosophy. …
By: Joel Zantingh on March 14, 2025
In The End of Race Politics: Arguments for a Colorblind America, Coleman Hughes calls for an end to racial identity as a primary marker for people, because it has not produced a more flourishing and equal society. His argument is “that colorblindness is the wisest principle by which to govern our fragile experiment in multiethnic…
By: Julie O'Hara on March 14, 2025
An acquaintance recently shared that she left a mutual group because it was too white. Her perspective was that it was a “sea of white faces.” I experienced the same group as wonderfully diverse. I thought the group looked less like me than the typical Oregon demographic. At over 30% non-white, it was easily twice…
