Department of Arts & Sciences
Overview
Lancaster Bible College’s (LBC’s) general education foundation courses, manifested in the liberal arts through our Arts and Sciences department, provide numerous benefits to our students—those whose majors reside within the department and the many students who take them as part of their core. The Arts and Sciences core plays a key role toward the missional, formational, and academic purposes of Lancaster Bible College (LBC), but the overarching focus of this foundational education is that it prepares students for college, professional, and life success.
Early forms of higher education in the West were born out of the medieval church. They carried on several classical and Christian traditions, called the “liberal arts,” because they were the signs of minds “freed” from the constrictions of their current time and place. While individual disciplines have certainly changed over time, the basic pattern for a holistic education remains in modern education. LBC’s unique environment situates these liberal arts studies precisely where they belong...within the context of God’s revealed truth, “faith seeking understanding” (to use a phrase from the theologian Anselm of Canterbury) (“Anselm”).
At the same time, students develop core hard- and soft- skills that current employers seek in their hires. The Arts and Sciences department creates academic space for students to connect their biblical training with their degree fields so that they learn how to integrate the Bible into the way they think, live, act, and interact. It delivers arts courses designed to cultivate in students a desire for the good, true, and beautiful, as revealed in Christ. It delivers science courses to broaden students’ understanding of nature, humanity, and God. In other words, the Arts and Sciences department puts the “world” in students’ biblical worldview.
LBC’s general education in Arts and Sciences plays an essential role in students’ academic, formational, foundational, and professional preparation because it equips them with the principles, knowledge, and skills that will benefit them long after they have walked off the graduation stage.
Department Mission
The Arts and Sciences Department serves the LBC community by teaching courses in the traditional liberal arts disciplines so students will attain the wisdom to see that Christ is the way the truth and the life, and upon the knowledge of him build a Christian philosophy of life. Department faculty teach students not only a wide range of subjects but also the time-tested patterns of human thought which belong to the traditional arts and science disciplines. These academic disciplines provide students a holistic way of thinking so that they develop a healthy curiosity, the ability to discern truth, and the desire to seek God. Students who complete the Arts and Sciences curriculum will develop a robust biblical worldview so that they grow into humble yet capable leaders who faithfully serve God in the church and society. In addition, students will, through the study of creation and human cultures, cultivate in themselves an appreciation for diverse expressions of beauty and for the value of knowledge so that they will more intentionally pursue a deeper love for God and their neighbors.
Department Vision
Arts: Human beings experience the world in the effort to find meaning in themselves and their natural and cultural contexts. The arts explore the intricacies of human experiences--self, society, nature, ideas, human creation, and culture. Knowing God, knowing oneself, and knowing others leads to thoughtful scholarship and fulfilled lives characterized by wisdom, worship, and love.
- The arts cultivate a posture of curiosity, deepening a desire for the true, good, and beautiful.
- The arts equip students to be professionally versatile, preparing them for holistic servant leadership and creative collaboration, while providing the tools to express themselves through polished oral and written communication.
Sciences and Math: The natural sciences and mathematics reveal truth concerning the created universe and systems of knowledge. They are unique paths of discovery that broaden our understanding of God and man in order to further the gospel and engage with cultural conversations. These disciplines empower students to be critical consumers of scientific information, practical problem-solvers through logical scientific and mathematical inquiry methods, and inspired stewards of God-given resources and themselves.
- Evaluate and construct logical arguments, in order to develop awareness of the assumptions and implications that exist in any system of knowledge.
- Synthesize mathematical and scriptural truths evident in the observed structure of the universe, the abstract structure of mathematical systems, and biblical descriptions of God’s nature and man’s purpose.
Department Chair
Krissi Castor, DA
Dr. Castor serves as an Associate Professor and English Composition Content Coordinator at Lancaster Bible College | Capital Seminary and Graduate School (LBC|Capital). She holds a BA in Liberal Arts, depths in English and Communications, from Excelsior College, Albany, New York, an MAM in Ministry-Leadership Studies, from Lancaster Bible College | Capital Seminary and Graduate School, and a DA in English Pedagogy, with a teaching of writing specialization, from Murray State University in Kentucky. Her research interests include teaching developmental writing, rhetoric and writing, rhetoric and faith, and rhetoric and southern cultural studies.
Dr. Castor has taught secondary and postsecondary English at various institutions in New York, Florida, and Pennsylvania. Her other experiences include professional roles in publishing as a managing editor, acquisitions- and author-relations editor, contributing writer, and an independent contractor for various businesses and nonprofit organizations.
As she partners with students in their thinking and writing development, she seeks to equip the next-generation of Christian leaders to communicate and reflect the gospel of Jesus Christ with excellence: “My heart is overflowing with a good theme, I recite my composition to the King; my tongue is the pen of a ready writer” (Ps. 45:1 NKJV).
Department Associate Chair
Geoffrey Reiter, PhD
Dr. Reiter is Associate Professor and Coordinator of Literature at Lancaster. He holds an MA in Church History from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a PhD in English from Baylor University. Prior to his time at LBC, he was Associate Professor and English Program Coordinator at The Baptist College of Florida. Dr. Reiter is also a writer and associate editor at the website Christ and Pop Culture. He is the author of over twenty academic articles on theology and genre fiction, and he has published dozens of poems and short stories in the horror, fantasy, and science fiction genres. He loves discovering ways in which the Bible helps us “read” culture and the ways in which cultural products like literature, film, or television may help us “defamiliarize” Scripture to see old truths from new and surprising angles.