Half a million students attend institutions associated with either the Council for Christian Colleges (CCCU) or the International Association of Christian Education (IACE). Twenty percent of those half a million students are enrolled in Liberty University (LU). In addition, there are over 220 thousand students enrolled in other Protestant universities that are not associated with…

As an art historian, I often begin my courses with a discussion of metanarratives: big picture, “mythic” structures that shape values and give meaning. There are metanarratives of “progress” (like American “Manifest Destiny”) and metanarratives of cyclical return (like the medieval “four ages of man:” birth, maturity, decline, death). And for some of us, especially…

For decades, social psychologists have acknowledged that prejudice starts as early as children start perceiving the world,1 with some literature citing that children start showing a preference for their own race as early as three months old.2 More recent literature suggests that own-group preference may not be equivalent to prejudice against out-groups, as evidenced by…

Editor's Note: The following is a book excerpt from the new edited volume: From the Outrageous to the Scandalous: Re-imagining Christian Thinking and Scholarship in an Age of Tribalism and Ideological Resentment, eds. Robert H. Woods Jr. and Mark Allan Steiner. The assignment that I’ve been given is to attempt an assessment, now more than a…

In watching two recent movies—Project Hail Mary and Remarkably Bright Creatures—I’ve noticed something that might help us understand the much-talked-about “vibe shift” that’s happening in America. If you’re unfamiliar with this trend, it refers to an emerging sense that our long cultural season of irony, nihilism, and performative cynicism may be giving way to something…

Pope Leo XIV released his first papal encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, on May 25, a roughly 42,000-word document outlining a Catholic response to recent developments in AI. I had been eagerly anticipating this encyclical and spent much of the release day poring over the text. While there have been other Christian efforts to release statements about…