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The True Race Part III: Eternal Love and Sport

In yesterday’s post, I pointed out how Dante’s Paradise helps one see the primacy of love. The arete of love is eternal, while all of the records, championships, trophies and praise in sport will pass away. In this final post, I will address the implications that the eternal love of God, to which Dante points…
October 22, 2025
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The True Race Part I

These posts conclude a series – done over several years – which examines how Dante’s Divine Comedy sheds light on the world of sport. The first post used the Inferno to illuminate the nature and place of courage in sport. The second post used Dante to examine the doctrine of Purgatory and the implications it…
October 20, 2025
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Book Excerpt from The Christian University & The Academic Establishment

This excerpt from (Excerpted from the concluding chapter of Ron Highfield, The Christian University & The Academic Establishment. Sulis Academic Press, 2025, pp. 195-203. Reprinted with the permission of the author and publisher. To download the full chapter and read the Table of Contents, go to the publisher page for The Christian University.)Book Excerpt from…
October 17, 2025
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Faithful Love for Our Non-Christian Neighbor: Should We Exclude Non-Christians from Key Student Leader Positions?

Christian universities and colleges that accept non-Christian students, which is the majority of Christian universities, always face the challenge of loving our non-Christian neighbors sacrificially while remaining faithful to our love for God (and by extension the institution’s Christian mission). The reason why doing both is so difficult stems from a common human reality: We…
October 16, 2025
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Learning as a Created Good

Recently, a colleague shared a question with me that he often discusses with his students during the first days of the semester. "Do you think Adam knew how to make a guitar?" It is a fun question to ponder, and to listen to students ponder. But, beyond the novelty of the pondering, I think this…
October 14, 2025

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Theological Foundations for Creation Care: Replacing Apathy and Despair with Hope and Christian Virtues — A Review Essay (Part 1)

Andrew J. Spencer’s and Steven Bouma-­Prediger’s recent releases applying Christian theology to contemporary environmental problems share similar goals and face common constraints. As trade paperbacks, both books are intended to motivate an indifferent or skeptical Christian readership and theologically equip students to address hot-­button political topics. The authors self-­identify as Evangelical, utilize the language of…
December 11, 2024
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Shaping Witnesses: Baylor’s English Graduate Program

In the past year or so, six graduates of Baylor University’s English graduate program have published books about the arts of reading well and the value of forming Christian imaginations. Jessica Hooten Wilson (grad of 2009) published Reading for the Love of God: How to Read as a Spiritual Practice (Jessica has also published several…
December 10, 2024
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Sharing Our Screens

Recently I re-watched The Truman Show, the 1998 film about a man, played by Jim Carey, who discovers that his life has been broadcast to the world as a reality TV show. Though produced a quarter of a century ago, the movie’s critique of an “always-on,” surveillant media culture felt timely and spoke to my…
December 9, 2024
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Not Quite Exiles nor Never Much of an Eden: The Meaning of Vocation for the Professorate Thirty Years after the Publication of Mark Schwehn’s Exiles from Eden

The early 1990s saw a rash of books on religion and higher education, and Mark Schwehn’s 1993 Exiles From Eden: Religion and the Academic Vocation in America was a book unlike any of the rest. It begins with two memorable illustrations of the central problem Schwehn addresses. The first recalls a faculty get-­together at the…
December 5, 2024
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Be the Hope You Seek

A friend asked me not so long ago, “Where can we find hope in such uncertain times?” Many of us have been asking this reasonable and pressing question for much of the past five years. As Christians, we can easily recite a couple of the 140 Bible verses that, in various different stories and admonitions,…
December 4, 2024
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Christ-Animated Scholarship and Human Worth

Every once in a while, I come across an article or book that exemplifies the best of what Christ-animated scholarship can and should be. I recently came across one such article in the field of psychology that addressed the topic of human worth. The concepts of self-worth and self-esteem have a long history in the…
December 3, 2024
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“Apostle to the Disillusioned” — A Response to Tomáš Halík

I appreciate Father Halík’s response to my review of his book. Let me reiterate that it’s an impressive work replete with valuable insights and many nuggets of wisdom and sanity. Despite the criticisms that I offered, his and my analysis of contemporary Christianity/Catholicism overlap considerably. In wondering whether forces extrinsic to the church have caused…
November 22, 2024
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“Apostle to the Disillusioned” — A Review of Tomáš Halík’s The Afternoon of Christianity

When an influential priest (the Czech, Templeton-­award winning author, teacher, and theologian Tomáš Halík) criticizes “ecclesiastical authorities” while seeking to advance the agenda of another ecclesiastical authority (in-deed, the highest of them all: Pope Francis, to whom the book is dedicated), one can’t help but be hopeful for or at least curious about the future…
November 20, 2024