Thanks to my friend and colleague Kent Van Til for his thoughtful response to my blog post on universal basic income.  In his response, he demonstrates very well what we at Hope College have formulated as our Virtues for Public Discourse.  In responding to his comments, I would note that we have much agreement on…

A recent Netflix documentary titled The Social Dilemma interviews several engineers who had helped build social media platforms, but who are now sounding the alarm on their creations. The film features prominent designers from Google, Facebook, and Twitter, including the engineer who created the pervasive “like” button and the inventor of the “infinite scroll.” The…

It’s Ash Wednesday, a time of repentance, and I’m put in mind of an artist of sorrow. Rogier van der Weyden, a 15th-century Netherlandish genius, was known for many things (including an audacious portrait of himself as a saint), See https://collections.mfa.org/objects/31035  but his paintings of Christ’s death are his most profound. They are almost unrivaled…

Landscape view of Salsberry Peak in the Pahrump Hills region, Gale Crater, Mars. Inset: Curiosity Rover “selfie.”  Credit: NASA Part 1. Full speed ahead 2021 will be a busy year for space exploration and commerce with the promise of great advances in science and technology. NASA Highlights will include landing the Mars Perseverance Rover and…

After the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in July 2020, I participated in a BLM protest in Harrisburg, PA. I brought along my copy of The Souls of Black Folk by Dr. W. E. B. Du Bois. I sat on a step of the State Capitol and read, aloud but quietly, the eleventh…

My friend Todd Steen has written a good and thoughtful article about providing a Universal Basic Income (UBI) for all in the United States.  In it, he makes direct references to the way Christian faith might direct our thinking on this subject.  As a theologian with an interest in economics, I would like to respond.…

“Christ Animated Learning” is an inspired title for this blog, for Christ the Logos (“word, thought, rationality”) is always the one who animates (from Latin anima, “spirit, breath of life”) the journey toward Truth that we call “learning.”  The same Spirit who effected my conversion to Classics as a college sophomore, immersing me in the…

Contemporary culture is obsessed with the human body. It (that is, the body) carries so much responsibility. Weak, mortal, finite, it is made to bear burdens of eternity: it is made to be a sign of dignity, meaning and status that is somehow eternal. So, we punish it, whipping it into shape with brutal exercises.…

Although I am a college professor, I must confess that my most important education during college did not come from professors. As an undergraduate majoring in history, political science, and religion at Rice University, I had some great classes with outstanding professors—one even won a Professor of the Year award among faculty for the entire…

A mere four years – something of a lifetime – ago, the Berkley Center asked many scholars and activists to offer advice for the new administration of President Trump. At the time, I argued that the new administration needed to leverage its multilateral assets: that freedom of religion or belief needed American leadership, but that…