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As We See It

As We See ItScience

Science and Faith: My Personal Journey

For most of my life, I have been a carefree young-earth creationist. Because I had no reason to believe otherwise, I assumed the creation of the world played out precisely as described in Genesis 1 and 2. That’s what my teachers seemed to believe, that’s what my parents seemed to believe, and that was, apparently, the only real Christian way to approach the matter. The theory of evolution was reserved for poor heathen atheists who because they refused to acknowledge…
April 30, 2016
As We See It

A Theological Community Speaks

We hear a lot these days about the impending demise of print media. Isn’t it remarkable that in such a difficult market, Perspectives keeps chugging along? There are two secrets to our success: On the expense side, the writing and production of the magazine are labors of love. Our writers don’t get paid, and our co-editors, review editors, poetry editors, board of editors and contributing editors all are volunteers. We pay a proofreader, and we do pay our managing editor…
February 29, 2016
As We See It

Barefoot Teaching

Today is not just the first day of teaching in a new semester for me; it also marks the beginning of my 25th year in the classroom. My silver anniversary, if you will. I’m not sure it’s an occasion for a party or anything. And I realize it’s clichéd to say, but it really doesn’t seem that long ago that my 22-year-old self was walking in to teach English 131AK: Expository Writing to incoming first-year students at the University of…
December 31, 2015
Tea lights
As We See It

Step by Step

When our sons were young, we put up the tree each Thanksgiving weekend, hanging the flotsam and jetsam of our growing history. It wasn’t gorgeous, but it was ours, and it satisficed. Now that we are empty nesters and without their youthful Thanksgiving enthusiasm, I’m a reluctant Christmas decorator. Last year, knowing we would be gone over the holidays, I left the Christmas boxes untouched in our cement-walled storage room. This Thanksgiving weekend, those boxes stayed unopened again. The project…
Carol Van Klompenburg
October 31, 2015
As We See It

Gender and Grace 25 Years Later: An Interview with the Author

by Kristin Kobes Du Mez This year marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of Mary Stewart van Leeuwen’s book Gender and Grace: Love, Work and Parenting in a Changing World, a book that has been a touchstone in the Reformed community’s understanding of sex, gender and feminism. Having gone through 14 printings, Gender and Grace has had remarkable staying power and has been translated into Korean, Arabic and Chinese. Perspectives: Tell us how you came to write this book.…
September 1, 2015
As We See It

Building a Tradition of Christian Gender Studies

Twenty years ago, I was a college student attending a Christian college in the Reformed tradition. (Dordt College, in case you’re curious). It was my junior year, and I had yet to have a female professor, I don’t believe I had read a book by a woman in any of my classes, and I’m certain I hadn’t read anything about women – until I was assigned to read Mary Stewart van Leeuwen’s Gender and Grace. Until that time, the only…
September 1, 2015
As We See It

Taking Another Look at Deification

The essays in this issue of Perspectives tackle a topic that might seem strange to readers habituated in the Reformed tradition. The word “deification,” if it rings a bell at all, is commonly associated with Eastern Orthodoxy or with Mormonism. Todd Billings, in his essay in this issue, notes that when students are first exposed to one of the ways that early Christian theologians thought about salvation – salvation as deification – they are taken aback. I often experience this…
July 1, 2015
As We See It

Saints Surround Us

When I was 18, I had about two hundred grandmothers, give or take fifty. By the time I was a senior in high school, I’d had a maintenance job at a nearby retirement community for more than two years, and, during that time, I’d gotten to know the residents pretty well. For three summers, I cleaned all their windows, a process made much more difficult by my constant struggle against all the knickknacks on the windowsills. Sometimes as I worked…
April 6, 2015
Used under Creative Commons license
As We See It

A Child of God Called Home Too Soon

Dale Brown died in the fall of 2014 after a bicycle crash. Most readers of Perspectives will know very little about Dale Brown, my friend and colleague whose life is the focus of a clutch of pieces in this issue of the magazine. Dale was my friend for 27 years; readers who didn’t know him may need some small bit of introduction in order to get a clearer sense of who this man was. What follows is my attempt to…
James VandenBosch
February 28, 2015