Dynamic Christian thinking about the ideas that shape our world
FiSch is a network of fellowship and support for Christian thinkers both in and out of the university. We love the rich diversity of God’s world and find that knowing Jesus as Creator, Redeemer and Lord transforms the way we understand it. We share a passion to see ideas bearing good fruit as we investigate problems, create opportunities and find smart solutions to the challenges of our time.
[Thinking Faith Network] has a splendid record of Christian engagement with all kinds of subjects, and I look forward to seeing fruit from the Faith-in-Scholarship project.
Tom Wright, University of St Andrews, commenting on the launch of FiSch
Latest Faith-in-Scholarship blog posts
A degree of critical thinking
What are universities for? There may be more answers to this question than there are academics in a…
Vision and revision: listening to T.S. Eliot
T.S. Eliot's poetry can give us not only aesthetic pleasure or academic challenge, but real pathways…
Reforming Economics?
“If it is to be governed essentially by the ground motive of the Christian religion, a scientific pr…
What do we do?
Faith-in-Scholarship pursues three types of activity:
- Conferences and collaborations for learning, research and development in the Christian framework of reformational philosophy.
- Nurture of groups fostering discussion that recognises Christ’s authority in all things, including academic work.
- Facilitating the mentoring of Christian students by mature Christian thinkers.
We helped to launch Church Scientific in Leeds, exploring how a Christian worldview can enhance science.
To read about the research projects which Faith-in-Scholarship is coordinating or contributing to, see our FiSch research posts.
To learn about some of the different Christian postgraduate groups around the UK, see the series of blog posts about local groups.
What is this ‘reformational philosophy’ framework?
Reformational philosophy builds on the thinking of Abraham Kuyper, who in 1880 famously said,
There is not a square inch in the whole domain of our human existence over which Christ, who is Sovereign over all, does not cry, ‘Mine!’.
Abraham Kuyper
A rich philosophical framework unpacking this has since been developed by the Dutch philosophers Herman Dooyeweerd and Dirk Vollenhoven and their numerous students worldwide. The framework is characterised by seeing the created order as intrinsically diverse, such that the academic disciplines complement each other, each proceeding by abstracting one or more aspects from that order. This stands in contrast to the reductionism that pervades much academic thinking, in which the disciplines are in competition with each other to provide a fundamental account of reality.
As such, the guiding beliefs of the FiSch project include:
- the Lordship of Jesus Christ over all things, including theoretical thought;
- that reality is given its structure by the Word of God that also became flesh and is revealed through the Scriptures;
- that the many-sidedness of this rich reality calls for interdisciplinary collaboration;
- that God calls people to scholarly work in the history of His Kingdom;
- that human interpretation of reality is impaired by sin but still produces good fruit insofar as God graciously guides both believers and unbelievers;
- that faithful, Spirit-led communities of study can enhance Christian responses to God’s diverse callings.
We think that being guided by these beliefs as we engage in our study, research, teaching, etc, will help us pursue our calling as Christian academics.
For more, see the series of blog posts, What is Faith-in-Scholarship?.
For some recommended reading on a wide range of academic subjects, see our book list.