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Addressing Reductionistic “Nothing but” Scholarship: The Conversation around a New Definition of “Evangelical,” Part 1

Christian scholars interested in Christ-animated learning have long observed that one major danger to such scholarship is reductionism. George Marsden helpfully summarized the problem in his book, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship, “Once we have a convincing explanation at the level of empirically researched connections we are inclined to think we have a complete…
May 27, 2025
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Intellectual Pilgrimage: Christians in the Contemporary Academy

The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship became an instant classic when it was released by Oxford University Press in 1997, but I must admit that I always disliked the title. While it is an effective attention-­grabber, the text itself is far more nuanced and polite than the title presages. Additionally, the word “outrageous” conveys neither…
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Catholic vs. Protestant

“In the one Christ, we are one.”                                          -motto of Pope Leo XIV The Catholic Church has recently elected a new pope, not quite three weeks after the death of Pope Francis on Easter Monday. Meanwhile, I have been thinking about Christian education in the city of Seattle, where I teach at a Protestant university…
May 21, 2025
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Renaissance Man: Charlie Peacock’s Memoir Drives Deep into Evangelicalism’s Historic Twentieth-Century Turn

A real renaissance is hard to come by. No birth is easy, let alone a rebirth. But that’s what American evangelicals experienced—that’s what they accomplished—from the mid-twentieth century through the opening decades of the twenty first: renaissance. Joel Carpenter describes the initial stirrings of this vast movement, in the aftermath of the 1925 Scopes Trial, with…
May 19, 2025

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The Anxious Generation: A Christian Educator’s Reflection: Part II

In "The Anxious Generation: A Christian Educator’s Reflection," I explored insights from Jonathan Haidt's book from a Christian perspective. I specifically paralleled the rise of anxiety among young people with the concepts of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration, demonstrating how these themes could enrich Haidt’s analysis. In his book, Haidt offers a way to reverse…
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Bringing Cultural Context to the Foreign Language Classroom and/or Introducing Culture (to a GenEd Curriculum) via Food

“companion” (n.)c. 1300, "one who accompanies or associates with another," from Old French compagnon "fellow, mate, friend, partner" (12c.), from Late Latin companionem (nominative companio), literally "bread fellow, messmate," from Latin com "with, together" (see com-) + panis "bread."Online Etymological Dictionary, “Companion,” (Etymonline.com, 2024), http://www.etymonline.com/search?q=companion. Enrollment in world language courses has seen a sharp decline in recent years.Kingson, Jennifer A. “College Students Bid…
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A Pope Who Doubts?

“Certainty is the great enemy of unity. Certainty is the deadly enemy of tolerance... If there was only certainty and no doubt , there would be no mystery and therefore no need for faith. Let us pray that God will grant us a Pope that doubts.” So implores Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, compellingly played by Ralph…
May 9, 2025
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The Joys and Perils of Silence: Lessons from Counseling

In my Counseling Theory & Practice class for undergraduate psychology students, the first skills practice session focuses on the reflection of feelings. As such, many of the guidelines for this session spotlight what to say and how to say it. For example, I provide students with a list of “feeling” words to add to their…
May 7, 2025
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Are We Educating Intellectual Wrestlers? Not with Chat GPT  

Religious institutions of higher education often distinguish themselves from their secular counterparts in terms of something called “purpose.” Sometimes the idea is that the two kinds have different purposes; sometimes it’s that one is purposeful in a way that the other is not (as in the argument that “secular” means trying to be “neutral” between…
May 5, 2025