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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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Helping Your New Faculty with Christ-Animated Learning

Recently, the editor of this blog, Perry Glanzer, asked readers if they had an example of faculty development for Christian mission that has been helpful. Since I have served on the Faculty Development Committee for the College of Arts & Sciences at Regent University for five years, I thought I would share one. Before I…
August 16, 2023
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Why Are Christian Campus Conversations about Alcohol So Anemic? Part II: A Substantive Christian Approach

A friend of mine recently shared that when talking with his daughter about her classes at a Christian university, he found himself repeatedly asking, “Did you discuss any constructive proposals?” Her consistent answer was, “No, we really did not have time.  We had to spend so much time on deconstructing structures of ____________” (with "deconstructing…
August 15, 2023
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In the Seed, I Perceive the Tree

When I teach our Natural Sciences Capstone seminar class, I must give the graduating seniors a challenging, cumulative assignment, appropriate to a 1-credit seminar course that meets once a week. In my class, these opposing requirements are met by assigning them to write a two-page proposal for the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program…
August 11, 2023
BlogBook Review

Ecology of Vocation: Recasting Calling in a New Planetary Era

“California’s Apocalyptic Fires” “Drought Conditions Expected to Worsen and Spread Farther” “Flooded Canadians Fear the Next Disaster” “Between Heat and Floods, England Endures Extremes” “Europe’s Floods are Latest Signs of Climate Crisis” This short sample of headlines from articles in the New York Times from the last few years provides evidence that we are living…
August 10, 2023
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Listening to The Vision of God

In April, the actions of the Washington state legislature were discussed on the SPU faculty e-mail list, which might be a first. We celebrated as SB 5848 “Concerning licensure for music therapists” passed.Congratulations to my colleagues Carlene Brown, Christopher Hanson, Evelyn Stagnaro, Bobbie Childers, and others for their hard work to accomplish this. The bill…
August 9, 2023
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The Challenge to Start a “Christian” Business

Christianity is best understood as a religion that requires integration throughout a believer’s life. Scriptures such as 1 Corinthians 10:31 and James 1:8 warn against compartmentalizing one’s life into sacred areas that are subject to God’s requirements and secular areas that are outside His purview. Christian business faculty have long called on our students to…
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The Conference Table of Opposites

“I will endeavor by a very simple and commonplace method to lead you by experience into the divine darkness,” wrote Nicholas of Cusa in 1453 to the monks at Tegernsee.Nicholas of Cusa, The Vision of God (New York: Cosimo, 2016), 2. In 2023, our faculty/staff reading group discussed Nicholas’s method in a conference room with…
August 7, 2023
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Christian Graduate Education Curricula Is Missing Christianity

I am continually amazed at how provincial and specialized contemporary graduate education is. By provincial and specialized, I mean that there is usually little interdisciplinary conversation that takes place within the curricula. Unfortunately, Christianity graduate education, which has reasons to overcome disciplinary silos, fails to counter this culture. In fact, although Christian institutions are supposed…
August 4, 2023