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BlogReviews

A Review of David I. Smith, Everyday Christian Teaching: A Guide to Practicing Faith in the Classroom

David I. Smith’s most recent book, Everyday Christian Teaching: A Guide to Practicing Faith in the Classroom, represents yet another of his significant and vital contributions to Christian education. Commencing with an invitation to wisdom for teachers and their students, Smith offers philosophical insights along with practical strategies for authentically integrating faith into teaching practices.…
September 5, 2025
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A Call to (Christian) Excellence

One way to understand the evolution of popular management publications over the last 50 years is to see it as beginning with a reaction to the struggles of American manufacturing in the 1970s. Shocked by the oil embargo and an invasion of cheaper, more efficient foreign imports, US car manufacturers attempted to adapt quickly but…
September 4, 2025
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Are You Trying to Create Experts or Mentor Students toward Excellence? The Two Are Not the Same

One factor behind the recent populist revolt in North America and other parts of the world stems from an increasing distrust of various experts (esp. medical scientists, journalists, and general scientists). There are numerous reasons for this distrust—some of them consistent with a Christian theological perspective, but other reasons have led to a problematic undermining…
September 3, 2025

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Poetry as a Way of Life

Some years back, I started an experiment of sorts by sharing a poem each day on Facebook.This post originally appeared in a slightly different form at MoralApologetics.com. Circa 2016, social media was becoming increasingly acrimonious, and I thought such a practice might be one way to shine a small but persistent light and beat back…
October 19, 2023
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The Rhythms of Imagined Faith

In the preface to her recent book on theological education, Elizabeth Conde-Frazier describes some of the repeating patterns that she experienced during her childhood as a member of a Latin@ church in New York.Elizabeth Conde-Frazier, Atando Cabos: Latinx Contributions to Theological Education (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2021). In her church, children were drawn into ministry early…
October 18, 2023
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Con-Serving and Keeping a Habitable Earth

  We should so behave on Earth that Heaven will not be a shock to us. — Pastor Willard BontragerWillard L. Bontrager was pastor of the Coldsprings Mennonite Church, 1949–1994. See the last paragraph of this blog post for additional information. Expectantly, an avid gardener approached me after my presentation at a conference at the…
October 17, 2023
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Are Hedonism and Hopelessness Overtaking Christian Students’ Ambivalence about Children?

I can still remember when I first encountered someone with strong convictions about overpopulation and children. I was a graduate student attending an Evangelicals for Social Action initiative, funded by the Pew Foundation (before it secularized). The wonderful program created by Joel Carpenter paired Christian graduate students with Christian faculty for intellectual mentorship. I am…
October 12, 2023
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The Soul and ChatGPT

In the first lecture I give to students in my freshman writing class, I ask students to “consider the source” of their writing. I argue that writing begins from the building blocks of language, which are words. I explain to them my belief, based on my faith in the Bible, that all words come originally…
October 11, 2023
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The Hell Dynamic

Lately, I have been especially attentive to outbreaks, like a rash, of what I call to myself the “Hell dynamic.” It is a spirit of domination and destruction, in that order. It begins with a struggle for power, exerted with greater or lesser straightforwardness. (This is “domination.”) It ends with a reckoning full of blame and…
October 9, 2023
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If You Want to Save Souls, Leave Bigger Tips

In the light of eternity, the light in which everything should always be viewed, what matters is the heart and the choices that flow from it. We are placed on this earth to educate our loves. As St. Paul famously says, “If I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if…
October 5, 2023