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Pondering Truth and Love in Christian Life

Part I: Truth My colleague had just finished delivering a public lecture on the challenge that intersex persons—those born with a mix of male and female organs, chromosomes, and hormones—present to the church. A perturbed member of the audience was expressing his disapproval of her call for the Christian church to understand, affirm, and welcome…
April 14, 2025
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Christian Reflections on Vibe Coding

If you follow trends in software engineering, you may have encountered the term “vibe coding,” recently popularized by Andrej Karpathy, deep learning researcher and OpenAI co-founder.Kevin, R. (2025, February 27). Not a Coder? With A.I., Just Having an Idea Can Be Enough. New York Times. This is how he defines the approach: There’s a new kind…
April 11, 2025
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Trump’s Tariffs Fail the Tests of Stewardship and Justice

Economists generally don’t like tariffs. This was true even before the latest round of tariffs implemented by President Donald Trump. Various surveys have found that around 90 percent of economists believe that tariffs will negatively impact economic welfare, and a similar amount believe that tariffs lead to inflation.As just one example, see https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/framing-next-four-years-tariffs-tax-cuts-and-other-uncertainties-trump. This is…
April 10, 2025
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Can Christian Higher Education Save Itself?

It is time to look around the corner As in all other spheres of higher education, religious colleges and universities today are experiencing a transformation. These schools must chart a path forward in a complex environment marred by a growing mistrust of the academy, increased skepticism about the value of a college degree, and a…
April 9, 2025
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The Unredeemed Liberal Arts: And How to Save Them (Part 1)

If you ask almost any student or professor what the purpose of the liberal arts is, they will likely not give you an explicitly theologically informed answer. Instead, they will likely discuss how  “it fosters critical thinking,” or helps one “adopt different approaches to understanding,” or “trains one’s mind to be agile.”For samples of this…
April 7, 2025

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How The Age of AI Makes Christian Colleges More Valuable

“I can learn anything from AI now – why spend four years at a Christian college?” A high school senior asked me this question recently, his phone displaying ChatGPT’s impressive analysis of his calculus homework. It’s a question that echoes in living rooms across the country as families weigh the value of higher education against…
March 5, 2025
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Strength in Christ’s Body

Praising Athletic Excellence In the early 20th century, physical culturist Bernarr Macfadden wrote a paean to praise the glory of humanity. His hymn of the gym—titled “Manhood Glorified”—was to be hailed, he said, “with majesty”: The world resounds, demanding human glory The cry for health prevails throughout the land While grovling through life’s mire Seeth…
March 4, 2025
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Peter Dougherty’s responses to the posts on “In Praise of Lunch”

First I would like to thank Todd Ream for his kind invitation to participate in the online discussion of my Inside Higher Ed article, “In Praise of Lunch,” appearing in Christian Scholars Review, and its editor-in-chief,  Perry Glanzer. Secondly, I’m deeply grateful to Tim Muehlhoff, Christopher Gehrz, and Jenell Paris, the three scholars who so…
February 28, 2025
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Benefits of Lunch Outside the Office: A Response

“Grab drinks?  We don’t even share the same elevators!” For the past five years, in addition to being a professor of communication, I’ve served as co-director of Biola University’s Winsome Conviction Project that seeks to open lines of communication between people entrenched in ideological, political, or theological disagreements.  When I was asked to respond to…
February 27, 2025
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Lunching Alone

It’s an odd thing to reflect on the meaning of academics gathering for lunch when you’re an academic on sabbatical. I relish so much about these occasional sabbaths from teaching: the time to rest and recharge, the opportunity to enjoy our twins’ first months in high school, the chances to travel and do research. Still,…
February 26, 2025
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An Empirical Examination of Dougherty’s Unified Field Theory of Lunch

In a commencement address to La Salle University, Peter J. Dougherty culled the most precious piece of wisdom from his 53 years of professional expertise to impart to graduating students. Just four words: meet often for lunch. In fact, let’s make it Lunch, a long, slow, enjoyable time at a sit-down restaurant. Getting together with…
February 25, 2025
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In Praise of Lunch

Editor’s Note: This past year we enjoyed reading Peter J. Dougherty’s essay “In Praise of Lunch.”  The essay inspired CSR’s Publisher, Todd Ream, to organize a series of responses to his article.  Thus, today’s post reprints the essay with his permission. Then, over the next three days, we will post three responses from different faculty.…
February 24, 2025
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Between Two Worlds: Safety, Suffering, and the Cross

I remember the dissonance I felt when I was invited to join a prayer meeting organized by Wheaton’s Politics and International Relations Department soon after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Masked and socially distanced, we gathered in a calm setting to pray for the people of Ukraine—huddled in basements and subways…
February 20, 2025
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A Liturgy for the Writing of Citations

Liturgies and daily prayers have long been part of Christian practice. The Psalms and the Lord’s Prayer are two prominent examples from the Bible, but church history also tells of the development of prayer books, books of hours, and the Book of Common Prayer. These aids helped the faithful meditate on scripture and Christian principles…
February 18, 2025