In recent years, multidisciplinary study has become all the rage in academic circles. Scholars have been going all out for interdisciplinarity, not only in research programs, but pedagogically in the classroom, and structurally in higher education curricula. Fewer and fewer cautionary voices are being heeded or even heard in this conversation. In this essay, I advocate a mediating position on this issue that has emerged from reflecting on my own professional work with interdisciplinary scholarship. That work includes research, scholarship, and (...) teaching in the fields of theology, religion and science, and religion and literature, as well as ten years of editorial experience with the American Journal of Theology and .. (shrink)

Two prominent questions come to mind when I think of readers likely to pick up a book with this title. Those attracted to a study of miracles will probably ask, "How can miracles be 'everyday'?" And those who eagerly anticipate Donald Crosby unfolding another dimension of his religious naturalism might well ask, "Why do we still need to be talking about 'miracles'?" In The Extraordinary in the Ordinary, Crosby weaves a gracious and expansive argument that brings both kinds of readers (...) to the same existential meeting place, a space where we take time to stand together in awe and wonder at the inexplicable mysteries of even the most seemingly mundane aspects of our daily lives—mysteries that draw us irresistibly... (shrink)