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Beyond Civility: The Call to Intellectual Hospitality

The conversation began, as it often does, with conviction. In my undergraduate criminal justice classroom, we were discussing the death penalty. One student spoke with certainty about justice as retribution—grounded, she explained, in her understanding of Scripture. Across the room, another student responded just as firmly, articulating a vision of justice rooted in restoration, also…
April 16, 2026
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Book Review of Follow Your Bliss and Other Lies about Calling

Finding one’s calling is a rich, complex journey. Honesty “about the ups and downs of calling will open up conversation” that fosters contemplating more meaningful and purposeful lives (16). That is one of the primary aims of Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore’s recent book. Utilizing faith, philosophy, and pragmatism, she pushes back on the pop culture notion of…
April 15, 2026
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Chasing AI: Wisdom and Responsibility for Christian Educators

As an educational psychologist, I study teachers and students, both of whom are learners in their own ways. As artificial intelligence (AI) burgeons in classrooms, I cannot help but think of Romans as a possible answer to the question Benjamin Bloom posed more than four decades ago. Roughly, Bloom’s question was: “How can we deliver…
April 14, 2026
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The “What” of Christian Scholar’s Review

Last week, Margaret Diddams discussed the important mission that guides Christian Scholar’s Review (CSR)—the “why.” As someone who studies Christian higher education, I also find that faithful institutions have theologically rich and informed mission statements. Unfortunately, many Christian institutions with great mission statements do not consistently demonstrate the operationalization of that mission in all they…
April 13, 2026
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Finding God in Engineering: The Shape is the Key

In the first post, I shared a story about Mike Mulligan that shaped me. In this one, I want to share the story that shaped my current approach to engineering education. It’s the story of how the t-shaped engineer came to be, and how a quiet theological correction helped me see its deeper truth. The…
April 10, 2026

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Luxuriant (at Christmastime)

In gray Seattle, it’s easy to feel a sense of mystery as you walk the streets. The clouds hide the sun, and the wind rushes (sometimes), as if hiding secret voices. The mystery is only greater now, as people walk silent and masked, faces veiled, paths parallel and never approaching. Each one is a rook,…
December 21, 2020
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A Christian Appraisal of Academic Titles

I have been thinking about academic titles this past semester (as is evident from my blog post at the beginning of the academic year and my Ph.D. student’s post yesterday about his experience of my experiment).  How fitting, then that the semester should end with the twitter-stirring controversy sparked by an op-ed about the academic…
December 17, 2020
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Shocking Our Socks off the Mantle

Annoyed by plump plastic Santas perched on suburban lawns, I was suddenly struck by the relevance of my scholarship to cultural conceptions of Christmas. In my November CSR blog, I discussed the need for Christians to avoid an “economy of exchange” in their vocabularies about salvation, and this time of year we can’t help but…
December 14, 2020
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Government for the Time Being: An Advent Reflection

Hallelujah! For the Lord God Omnipotent Reigneth!  So begins the most acclaimed moment in the most acclaimed Christmas oratorio ever written.This post is adapted from William S. Brewbaker III, “Government For the Time Being,” in Austin Sarat, ed., Legal Responses to Religious Practices in the United States: Accommodation and Its Limits (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012),…
December 11, 2020
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Polarization and the Academy

One of the clearest conclusions we can take away from the 2020 election season is that political and ideological polarization has continued to be one of the most powerful forces in our social life. In recent days, I have seen a variety of calls for us to come together as a people, or as a…
Steven McMullen Headshot
December 9, 2020
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More Than (Art and Orthodoxy)

In the early centuries after Christ, myriad heresies peeled free of the doctrinal core, curling attractively, then blanching and withering. They were like eddies swirling off a current, spiraling prettily and then dissipating. Or like whorls of smoke from a pipe. Such things were attractive precisely in their divergence from the core. They were Life…
December 7, 2020
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Does God Pick the Winner of the Super Bowl?

The work of a Christian scholar is bound to the questions of the Christian community, those questions that rise up from the “fear and trembling” by which all Christians work out their salvation and whose answers, however incomplete, form the basis of the account of the hope that is in us all. This means that…
December 4, 2020
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Reflections on How to End a Semester

This semester seems to be ending in stages. We planned to send students home at Thanksgiving and teach the remainder of the semester online. Then a spike in COVID infections in the wider population and a state shutdown of schools and universities in response pulled us out of the classroom a week early. Some semesters…
December 2, 2020