Habits of Hope: Educational Practices for a Weary World

In the world of education, disorientation and uncertainty has been increasing for several decades, with the Covid-19 pandemic only exacerbating preexisting challenges. Christians called to academic vocations need authentic hope to sustain them in their work--and they need to be able to share that hope with a weary world.

Habits of Hope explores a Christian understanding of hope and how it applies to the work of educators, administrators, scholars, and others in academia. Essays by master practitioners focus on six key educational practices and describe how these practices can cultivate hope within educators as well as among their students and everyone they serve:

• integration
• conversation
• diversity
• reading
• writing
• teaching

Contributors include Hans Boersma; Kimberly Battle-Walters Denu; Kevin G. Grove, CSC; Cherie Harder; Jon S. Kulaga; Philip Graham Ryken; David I. Smith; and Jessica Hooten Wilson.

Christian hope, these thinkers are convinced, has two fundamental characteristics: it's tied inextricably to the world to come, inaugurated by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ; and it's active in its very nature. Habits of Hope combines theology and practical application to help educators find hope and infuse it throughout every area of their work.

Christopher J. Devers is assistant professor of education at Johns Hopkins University and a senior fellow for the Lumen Research Institute.

Todd C. Ream serves at Indiana Wesleyan University as professor of humanities, executive director of faculty research and scholarship, and a senior fellow for the Lumen Research Institute.

Jerry Pattengale serves at Indiana Wesleyan University as university professor and codirector of the Lumen Research Institute.