Addenda Volume 2.5 (May 2019)



Considerations: A Devotion
By Prof. Osam Edim Temple (Executive Committee Chair)

Brothers and sisters,

As we go through this month’s Addenda, please let us take a moment to pray for Christians in different parts of the world who are facing persecution, hatred, tyranny and all manner of government censorship. The Easter bombing in Sri Lanka is a chilling reminder that the world will do anything to deny and impugn the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. For 2,000 years, the agents of darkness have remained uncomfortable with the resurrection of Jesus. To the Jews it is a stumbling block, to the Gentiles, it is foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:23), but to us Christian scholars, it is the hope for mankind and the key to all knowledge and wisdom.

Early on that Easter morning, Caroline Mahendran, a Sunday School teacher at the Zion Church in Batticaloa, Sri Lanka, asked the children in her class a crucial question: “How many of you are willing to die for Christ?” The entire class raised their hands. She looked around with satisfaction and left to join the main service. Just around the corner, the television camera caught a young man carrying a bag and walking briskly down the streets towards the church. He didn’t seem to have a care in the world. He met a mother and her child on the way and paused to pat the child on the back. Nobody would have suspected that this gentle-looking Muslim was a human bomb. A few minutes later, the explosion that followed was deafening…and half of those children died.

Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul (Matthew 10:28).

Of course, the bombers caused indescribable grief to many, but they ushered those children into the eternal and loving hands of their Lord and Saviour.

In our various universities, the bombs of Sri Lanka are staring us in the face and the question of that Sunday school teacher continues to reverberate down the corridors of history: how many of us are willing to die for Christ? Are we willing to mentor our students and colleagues and make Christ incarnate in their lives? Are we prepared to reach out to our communities with the sacrificial love that Jesus showed on the cross? What is our role as Christian scholars in a world of hate?

We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus (2 Corinthians 4:8-10). 

Dear scholars, although we are daily beleaguered by the burgeoning forces of secularism, although the bombs of atheism and relativism continue to explode in our school curriculum, although the bombshells of scepticism and cynicism are daily planted in the womb of our civilization, the victory of Christ on the cross is a reality that can never be erased. We must continue to be exemplary in character and learning.  We must never be ashamed of our faith. Let the life of the risen Christ be manifested in our teaching, research, and service. And let us demonstrate in our works the eternal truth that “He is not here: He is risen!”

The Executive Committee chose its first-ever Chair, Professor Osam Edim Temple, on January 17. He is also the Society of Christian Scholars’ regional representative for Anglophone Africa. Professor Temple and his family reside in Abuja, Nigeria.

SCS Resources

Regional Consultants
Do you need contextualised advice from a Society consultant? For example, you might benefit from asking a consultant about forming a local community of Christian faculty in your area, how to use the society’s research databases, how to use our video conferencing (Zoom), how best to utilise our resource library and curricula, etc. Then be sure to ask a consultant today! 

Profile Picture of Granville Pillar

Meet our Regional Consultant, Europe: Prof. Granville Pillar, Ph.D.

Granville is currently Associate Professor of Philology at Ferenc Rákóczi II Transcarpathian Hungarian Institute, Ukraine. He lectures and researches in the fields of second-language pedagogy, cultural studies, technology in language teaching, bilingual education, and oral skills development. He has served as a Global Scholars Fellow for twelve years.  Read more about Granville or contact him directly here.

Member Site Job Board
Are you looking for a new academic position? Would you like to practise your discipline in a different locale? Do you need to post an opening from your department? Check our Society Job Board. It is updated weekly! 


Featured Resource: Vinoth Ramachandra offers a dialogical model for engaging the university, both students and professors, at a variety of different levels. At the heart of his model is the idea of first understanding before being understood. Check out this resource in our Society Resource Library

SCS News

Editorial Services Expand
Having assembled a highly skilled and still-growing complement of about a dozen editors in various fields, we are happy to announce an expansion of the availability of our Editorial Services program.

To avoid being overloaded by instant demand, we initially limited the scope of Editorial Services to academic papers being prepared for peer-reviewed journals. We are now changing that policy.

Effectively immediately, Full Members may submit for editing any documents related to their academic and professional work.*

That could include research summaries, articles for local publications, opinion essays, PowerPoint presentations, or even administrative reports––just about anything you’re writing that could use review by an English-language editor.

If our editors get too busy, priority will be given to requests by non-native English speakers.

We think that for many Society members, editing support will be a highly practical benefit of membership and the one they use most frequently. We hope that many will take advantage of its expanded availability.

We can always use more volunteer editors willing to review papers and other documents related to their field. If you are interested in helping, regardless of your prior editing experience, contact our Society Senior Editor.

*An earlier version of this edition of the Addenda erroneously stated that the Society of Christian Scholars Editorial Services is available to Associate Members. More accurately, Editorial Services are only available to Full Members of the Society.

Upcoming Events

Invitation to Virtual Cafés: Integrating Faith in the Workplace
Society members have been extended a special invitation to join several “Virtual Café” webinars that discuss how one can integrate their faith in the workplace. No registration required, just use the zoom link found in the entry of the Virtual Café. Click to view the Virtual Cafés.

Conversations on Science and Faith On Saturday, 18 May 2019 at 1500 GMT, David and Kate Vosburg, authors of Jesus, Beginnings, and Science: A Guide for Group Conversation (Pier Press, 2017), will explain why and how they hope to promote positive conversations on science and faith on campuses and in churches, in a webinar hosted by Dr. Stephen Garrett.

David is Professor of Chemistry at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California and is currently Visiting Professor at the University of Guanajuato in central Mexico. Kate has been a campus minister with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship for 20 years and holds a Master of Arts in Theology from Fuller Theological Seminary.

Register for the webinar here: https://scshub.net/webinars/jesus-beginnings-and-science-saturday-18-may-2019-at-1500-gmt/

Addenda Volume 2.5 (May 2019)

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