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Seeing the Image of God in Everyone: Reducing Prejudice Through Imago Dei

For decades, social psychologists have acknowledged that prejudice starts as early as children start perceiving the world,1 with some literature citing that children start showing a preference for their own race as early as three months old.2 More recent literature suggests that own-group preference may not be equivalent to prejudice against out-groups, as evidenced by…
June 10, 2026
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The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind: Then and Now

Editor's Note: The following is a book excerpt from the new edited volume: From the Outrageous to the Scandalous: Re-imagining Christian Thinking and Scholarship in an Age of Tribalism and Ideological Resentment, eds. Robert H. Woods Jr. and Mark Allan Steiner. The assignment that I’ve been given is to attempt an assessment, now more than a…
June 9, 2026
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An Alien, an Octopus, and the Inescapable Grace of God

In watching two recent movies—Project Hail Mary and Remarkably Bright Creatures—I’ve noticed something that might help us understand the much-talked-about “vibe shift” that’s happening in America. If you’re unfamiliar with this trend, it refers to an emerging sense that our long cultural season of irony, nihilism, and performative cynicism may be giving way to something…
June 8, 2026
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A Protestant Response to the Pope’s Magnifica Humanitas on AI

Pope Leo XIV released his first papal encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, on May 25, a roughly 42,000-word document outlining a Catholic response to recent developments in AI. I had been eagerly anticipating this encyclical and spent much of the release day poring over the text. While there have been other Christian efforts to release statements about…
June 5, 2026
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How to Train a Trillionaire

Elon Musk recently made the headlines for his proposed Tesla pay package that could exceed one trillion dollars,1 setting a new high watermark in CEO compensation. It is unlikely that Musk will actually receive that amount for multiple reasons. The proposed pay scheme includes a series of financial targets, including dramatically increasing the firm’s market…
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AI, Translation, and Telling the Truth

I am working on a large translation project this year. I have been surprised to find several conversation partners voicing the assumption that I am getting AI to do the translating for me. I’ve been wondering how to respond. A short, but in the end inadequate answer is that, impressive as the current variations on…
June 3, 2026

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On Going to Church: Mimesis and Magnificence

Recently, thanks to a collaboration with fellow CCCU school Gordon College, I was able to spend a month in Italy teaching art history to a wonderful group of Christian students. This was, of course, a priceless opportunity for an art historian. Italy abounds in stellar museums and archaeological sites, and over the years, I have…
May 21, 2024
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Christian Universities Do Little to Help Students Contemplate Excellent Christian Citizenship: Here’s the Evidence

Since it is an election year, I wondered if I could find evidence that Christian universities help their students contemplate excellent Christian citizenship. As mentioned in an earlier post, my research team examined the general education requirements at 231 Protestant colleges requiring at least one Bible or theology course. We chose these institutions because they showed…
May 17, 2024
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Can a Public Speaking Course Be Christian? Not According to Christian University Catalogs (with Only Six Exceptions)

Public speaking is one of the most common courses that one will find in the general education curriculum. Yet, we recently discovered that every Protestant university but six does not use a bit of Christian rhetoric when describing what they teach for that required class.In cases where the institution used a distribution model and allowed…
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Do Not Be Conformed to the World of Sports: Relearning How We Think about, Feel, and Do Sports as Christians (Part 3)

*This is part 3 of a three-part series. Part 1 utilized a salient real-world example to demonstrate the theological dangers brought about by the tendency for athletic performance to supersede Christian, moral excellence within the context of sports. Part 2 expands upon the bodily consequences of a misaligned allegiance to sports, which subvert the holistic…
May 15, 2024
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Do Not Be Conformed to the World of Sports: Relearning How We Think about, Feel, and Do Sports as Christians (Part 2)

*This is part 2 of a three-part series. Part 1 utilized a salient real-world example to demonstrate the theological dangers brought about by the tendency for athletic performance to supersede Christian, moral excellence within the context of sports. Part 2 expands upon the bodily consequences of a misaligned allegiance to sports, which subvert the holistic…
May 14, 2024
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When Mother’s Day Meets the Ascension

The ascension of Jesus Christ to heaven may be in the creed and on the church calendar, but compared to Christmas, Easter, or even Pentecost, it doesn’t get much airtime (My apologies for the pun.).It has received growing attention from Christian scholars over the past century. The first study came out of Oxford’s circle of…
May 10, 2024
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Civic Hospitality, Pedagogical Engagement, and Faith-Framed Learning

One of the possible functions of Christian beliefs and practices in teaching and learning contexts is to act as framing devices. When concern for student wellbeing is named as pastoral care, when environmental responsibility is connected to stewardship or creation care, or when language learning is understood as a way of welcoming strangers, theological and…
May 8, 2024