John Brown University's Student Newspaper
This past weekend, 200 students attended the annual SMLT Breakaway retreat at New Life Ranch. Breakaway is a spiritual fall retreat that has been a tradition for JBU students. It is a time for students to get away from campus, classes and routine, and seek spiritual rest. JBU students arrived on Friday night, and enjoyed community before the first worship service.
On Saturday, Sept. 17, Siloam Springs celebrated with their own Hispanic Heritage Festival at the Chatauqua Amphitheatre in Memorial Park downtown. Live music, mariachis, hispanic food trucks and folkloric dancers filled the festival. Families and several JBU students came to this event to enjoy the hispanic heritage celebration.
An Editorial put out by The Threefold Advocate attracted my attention recently. Entitled “Essentials of Spiritual Inaccessibility and other JBU Classes,” the author argued that the difficulty of JBU’s required Bible curriculum was proving detrimental to students’ faith, associating this with young people leaving the church! This is a fairly serious accusation, but the author’s reasoning left something to be desired. The piece began by describing the apparent horrors of test days and assignments in detail, which would make excellent material for a psychological thriller. It abstained from discussing whether this anxiety is true of other JBU classes. I will leave readers to explore the gory details for themselves here, but this dramatization provides the basis for the main claim: excessively difficult Bible classes teach students that “the Bible is too complicated…to understand and is inaccessible to the non-theologically trained reader.” JBU is failing in its mission to “develop the spiritual being” of students at a base level by allowing theological content to be “inaccessible and unattainable,” especially with respect to grading. This leads “many students” to question the faith, which the author associates with the exodus of young people from the church. Christian education (JBU included, presumably) is “turning away and failing a majority of their students” due to a lack of distinction between “academics and spirituality” that “negatively” affects “some students and their faith lives in severe ways.” In order to mitigate against this danger, JBU ought to center these classes on “theological understanding rather than testing and grading.”
JBU returned from Christmas Break to kick off the second half of the basketball season on New Year’s Day, where both the men and women took wins at home against Oklahoma Panhandle State. The women’s basketball season was briefly put on pause for JBU afterwards due to COVID-19 issues within the program. Because of the Sooner Athletic Conference’s policy on COVID-19, the team had to forfeit their next three games and have losses added to their record. They returned to the court on Jan. 13 against Science & Arts, and after dropping that game (55-50) and the following matchup against Texas Wesleyan (74-72, OT), they proceeded to win their next six, five of which were by double digits.
The term “self-care” has been a buzzword since 2016 when it hit the mainstream. Previously, the medical community coined self-care for institutionalized patients in the 1950s to help cultivate self-worth. In her article on Slate “A History of Self Care,” Aisha Harris said, “Self-care originally caught on as a medical concept. Doctors have long discussed it as a way for patients to treat themselves and exercise healthy habits, most often under the guidance of a health professional.” The definition of self-care, Harris continued, shifts from medical patients to those in extremely stressful occupations, including therapists, emergency medical technicians and social workers. “The belief driving this work was that one cannot adequately take on the problems of others without taking care of oneself,” Harris explained.
What’s wrong with “white Jesus,” you might ask? Christianity is a global religion! Is it not best expressed in an artistic sense through a multicultural lens? In fact, if you were to step into the office of John Brown University’s intercultural studies professor, you might see on her walls art representing Bible stories in a Picasso-esque style with a Chinese flair. This is the work of He Qi, a Chinese artist and theologian who has sought to combine his culture with his training and understanding of Scripture. For generations, as formerly colonized countries have come forth in claiming Christianity as their very own, their artists have similarly taken ownership of Biblical narratives by portraying them as appropriate to their cultural contexts. As early as the 1970s, Christian artistry has arisen from Malawi, Puerto Rico, native New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, portraying the Madonna and Child, Nativity scenes, Adoration of the Magi and more.