In a recent essay in First Things, Mark Bauerlein offered an account of the last half century (or more) of literary studies that is dazzling (in both its breadth and depth) and devastating (in its accuracy). While the history described in the article, “Truth, Reading, Decadence,” centers on developments in the field of English, the…

One of the problems Christians face in engaging today’s environmental challenges is appreciating the depth and breadth of our heritage. I’ll confess to a gap in my teaching. In the past, when I was assigning supplemental readings for environmental studies courses, I tended to stick to titles, like A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, that are…

Liberal arts:  the term designated for the education proper to a free person (Latin liber, “free”) as opposed to a slave. (Merriam-Webster dictionary) “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” John 8:34-36 Although the concept of a liberal arts education has existed for over fifteen hundred years, the way scholars…

Established in 1935, the Wheaton College Science Station in the South Dakota Black Hills hosts the longest running off-campus program at the Illinois-based college and represents a pioneering effort for offering summer programs in field science for Christian higher education. Picture how different things were culturally and politically those 86 years ago. The year 1935…

“I need 2 more points, so tell me your favorite science/chemistry joke. All answers will earn 2 points.” It has become a tradition of mine to make this the last question of the final test in my freshman nursing chemistry class each fall. I have found that many students enter the course afraid of chemistry,…

In Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, the character Lucien keeps a library of “every story that has ever been dreamed … novels their authors never wrote, or never finished, except in dreams.”Gaiman, Neil. "Season of Mists, Vol. 4." The Sandman (1992), p. 40. One shelf, presumably that of British authors, holds The Return of Edwin Drood by Charles…

Whatever rises must fall. Birds return to the forests of their birth, and salmon to the place of their spawning. Elephants (mythically) and humans, too, try to go home to die. Much of Creation is departure and return – but return in a different light. It is return, perhaps, with new maturity. Or return with…

Some years ago, I was sitting in my campus office minding my own business when the phone rang. It turned out to be Matt, a student who had been in a sequence of required core German courses that I had taught a few years earlier. He seemed breathless with excitement. It quickly emerged that he…

This article initially appeared in Current. I was on a train heading from Alexandria to Cairo. Next to me sat my friend Grace, a fellow student in the American master’s program we were just finishing. She was a Kenyan who had a radiant smile and a prominent accent that sent her English dancing and curling…

Our students are often our best teachers. Their actions often expose the ungodly perspectives and habits that have accumulated on us like barnacles on a ship. I encountered two stories while coding interviews from Baylor students that reminded me that I have some barnacles from difficult experiences about loving the unlovable.   If I had been…