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News: CAS's Quentin Schultze Honored for Two New Books

According to Professor Mark Fackler, his colleague Quin Schultze does not rest. “I’ve never known him to spend a day on down time,” the CAS Chair described of the prolific colleague he has known since their shared grad school days. “He’s always talking, always thinking, always up.”

With ideas always buzzing, it’s no wonder that Professor Schultze has had two new books published in the past year, an achievement which staff, students, and community members gathered to celebrate at a reception in the Meeter Center one sunny April afternoon.

The two books are as diverse in content as they are in length: the slim volume High-Tech Worship? Using Presentational Technologies Wisely (Baker Book House), and the 500-page Christianity and the Mass Media: Toward a Democratic Accomodation (Michigan State University Press).

High Tech Worship, written for pastors and laypeople, techies and technophobes, assesses the increased presence of new technology in church sanctuaries. It explores how congregations can wisely incorporate technologies such as PowerPoint into fitting worship. He says the goal should be to enhance rather than detract from worship.

In Christianity and the Mass Media: Toward a Democratic Accomodation, Schultze dissects the long-standing tension between the media and the church, and concludes that this conflict actually discloses the interdependence between the two institutions for their mutual vitality and longevity. In fact, Schultze maintains, the media were founded and continue to operate upon strikingly religious assumptions about progress, community, liberty, and other fundamental “goods.”

A vast academic work that was left simmering on a burner in his research for twenty years, Schultze’s tome was completed only with the boost of a grant from the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship (CCCS), which he thanked at the reception. Professor Jim Bratt, Director of CCCS, responded that when the proposal for Christianity and the Mass Media came to the governing board for funding, there was no question of its merit: “It was one of the slam dunks.”

High-Tech Worship and Christianity and the Mass Media mark Schultze’s eleventh and twelfth books to be published. Making introductory comments during the reception, Fackler remarked that the many people recognized in the acknowledgement pages of Schultze’s books “must number in the legions.” Among them are close family and friends, mentors, colleagues, and even past students.

Schultze emphasized the significance of these people’s contributions to his own continued education, and specifically addressed the involvement of students past and present. “If you give [Calvin students] time and space to contribute, it’s amazing what they come up with… It has greatly improved my teaching and writing to have students like these.” For more information about High-Tech Worship and Christianity and the Mass Media, visit Professor Schultze’s Web site.

—Rachel Zylstra