This month, I am going to ask your forbearance as I share some personal news. Next week, the second part of my two-part work on moral education in higher education will be published. The first volume released earlier this year, The Dismantling of Moral Education: How Higher Education Reduced the Human Identity, examined the historical path of moral education in American higher education. This second volume, Identity Excellence: A Theory of Moral Expertise for Higher Education, suggests a way that we can move forward. I hope those of you interested in the redemption of higher education will find it stimulating and thought provoking.

On August 8th, the summer issue of Christian Scholar’s Review (LI:3) will begin to hit mailboxes and be released on our website. This is a special themed issue on conviction, civility, and Christian witness guest edited by Rick Langer, Tim Muehlhoff, and Robert Woods, Jr. In asking what it means to be Christ-like in our public witness and personal engagement in a time of fractured society and relationships, the editors have curated poetry, interviews, art, as well as our more typical scholarly work to address such timely questions. It also contains a rich book review section, including extended review essays by Craig E. Matison and Chan Woong Shin and a review and response between Katie Kresser and Makoto Fujimura. Look for our blog on the 8th, which describes the goals of the issue in more detail and provides live links to all its contents.

Now that conferences are back in full swing, we want to remind you about some upcoming faith-learning conferences this fall:

–September 25-27, Best Practices in Christian Higher Education, Abilene Christian University

–September 29-October 1, CCCU Doctoral Education Forum, Judson University

–October 26-28, Art Seeking Understanding, Baylor University

During one lunch at the Association for Moral Education conference I attended this month, I found myself sitting next to a Chilean and an Arab Israeli scholar. During our conversation, the Chilean scholar brought up Chile’s conflict with Bolivia and Peru, which lasted from 1879-1884. He noted that, since Chile won, he lives his life, morally, mentally, and emotionally, as if this war is over. It has little influence on his identity as a Chilean. Yet, whenever he meets Bolivians, this war continues to shape them morally, mentally, and emotionally. It is not over. He then made the comment. “For the loser of any conflict, the war is hardly ever over.”

The comment reminded me of two responses to the American Civil War. The winner, Abraham Lincoln, in his Second Inaugural Address closed with these famous lines, “With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

Less well-known is Southern theological professor Robert Dabney’s declaration, “I hear brethren say it is time to forgive… I do not forgive. I do not try to forgive. What! Forgive these people, who have invaded our country, burned our cities, destroyed our homes, slain our young men, and spread desolation and ruin all over the land!”

Yes, forgiveness is always easier for the winner. The sign of true Christian love is to forgive when you are the loser–no matter what identity conflict loss you suffered–whether in your political, gender, racial, national, friend, ecclesial, or professional identity. When you forgive as an apparent “loser,” you truly know what it means to forgive like Christ on the cross.