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How Coaching Youth Sports Helped My Thinking about Christian Character

The most important activity that helped refine my view of character education was not taking classes on epistemology and ethics from Dallas Willard. Nor was it taking all my other Ph.D. classes that addressed virtue or moral development. It was coaching youth league sports. Granted, readings in philosophy, ethics, and theology led me to recognize…
June 25, 2025
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AI and the Grammar of Descent

Recently, there’s been even more press than usual about AI proliferation and its associated risks. The hype has been driven, in part, by the now infamous Ross Douthat interview with Daniel Kokotajlo, executive director of the A.I. Futures Project, in which Kokotajlo suggests that AI could take over civilization—and “then kill all the humans”—by 2027.…
June 24, 2025
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God Made All Nations from One Blood: The Origins of a Biblical Argument against Slavery

In 1526, William Tyndale’s ground-breaking translation of the English New Testament appeared. In this translation, Tyndale used a unique phrase that was not in John Wycliffe’s original English translation. Instead of translating a key passage from Paul’s sermon to the Athenians in Wycliffe’s original way, “ made of one all the kind of men” (Acts…
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Mirrors Transformed by Light:Meditations on the God Who Is Light

I’d like to propose a thought experiment -- one that may transform your understanding of something you see every day. Thought experiments can change the world, or at least your understanding of it. Einstein’s great scientific breakthroughs started with a thought experiment, something like this one. For our experiment, imagine how a mirror works. If…

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Building a Better Legal Education

“Build to-day, then, strong and sure, With a firm and ample base; And ascending and secure Shall to-morrow find its place.” -H.W. Longfellow- Since the ostensible end of the COVID pandemic, and with the return of students to in-person classes, America has seen an interesting shift on law school campuses. Observers note a rising wave of activist students that the National Jurist called “the protest generation.”Julia Brunette Johnson, “The Protest Generation,” National…
April 2, 2024
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The “Good Thief” and Good Friday

“My song is love unknown, my Saviour’s love to me; love to the loveless shown, That they might lovely be.”Samuel Crossman, “My Song is Love Unknown,” hymnary.org, 1664, https://hymnary.org/text/my_song_is_love_unknown It is common practice in many Christian denominations to reflect on the Passion during Lent. For instance, in the Catholic Church, there are the Stations of…
March 28, 2024
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The Value in Evaluating Your Students’ Work

I was recently engaged in a conversation with an old friend who took up teaching late in life and via a non-traditional path (read - no formal pedagogical training). He was discussing his mounting pile of grading and his complete disinterest in reading his student’s papers. I believe we have all engaged in conversations regarding…
March 26, 2024
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Hospitality, Teaching, and Pauses for Reflection

DAVID: Some years ago, I was teaching an intensive graduate class in curriculum studies to a group that included students from multiple countries. The first significant written assignment came a few days into the course. I asked students to write about how their upbringing and identity were likely to bias their curriculum work. Which of…
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Healing the Imagination: The Crucifix as Medicine

I am an art historian by trade, and recently, I had the opportunity to deliver an art history lecture at my church. I always relish these occasions, because they give me a chance to share my passion with a wider audience. They also, maybe surprisingly, help me with my own research. I’m deeply interested in…
March 19, 2024
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The Liberating Arts: Why We Need Liberal Arts Education

Geoffrey Galt Harpham has argued that conversation about crisis is fundamental to the humanities in the United States, an insight I extend to the liberal arts more generally.Geoffrey Galt Harpham, The Humanities and the Dream of America (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2011). Certainly, crisis-talk has spanned my own career. From internal academic anxiety…
March 15, 2024
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A Tale of Two Tales . . . Or Five

The stories that a culture tells give us a clue to the beliefs and values of that culture. The stories that achieve a popular following suggest what is on the mind of a culture at a moment in time. For over a thousand years, the people of Western Europe told their stories through allegorical poetry.…
March 13, 2024