Throughout our scholarly careers, we have consistently been struck by an empirical finding we often encounter. The most important religious variable predictor in studies is usually not how people identify (e.g., Christian) or what they believe (e.g., certain views of the Bible). Instead, it is simply a weekly action. How often do they go to…

For my own part, I know I must keep alive in myself what I have once known and grown into. —Thomas MertonThomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (New York: Doubleday, Image, 1968), 187.  My wide-ranging but low-built apartment complex, constructed before I was born, values its old maples and oaks, though time has reduced…

Why does the Bible exist? Whereas many introductory textbooks explore the “Four W’s” of inquiry (who, what, when, and where), Jacob L. Wright seeks to answer why a tiny nation over the course of several centuries produced a prolific and enduring corpus of texts. Setting aside answers one might expect from a confessional setting (“because…

When we receive a manuscript that looks promising for publication, I often ask its authors to keep two things in mind as they work on revisions. First, I ask them to make it clear why people should care about their topic, reminding them that most of their readers will likely be outside their field. However,…

In How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen (2023), David Brooks calls us to re-think how much true influence we can have on others if we do not take the time to genuinely know them and hear their perspectives. In a time of distrust and uncertainty across…

In 2018, a group of us at Baylor helped start the Baylor Faith and Character Study (see here for more). We did so for a variety of reasons. First, we wanted to know the faith and character of our incoming students. As any good missiology or pedagogy course will teach you, you have to know…

“Without stories there is nothing. Stories are the world’s memory. The past is erased without stories.” ― Chaim Potok, Old Men At Midnight One Sunday after church, my daughter and our very hip lead pastor began talking about Harry Potter. With the names “Tonks and Lupin,” the differences in education, experience, gender, age, fashion, and…

It is the time of year when those of us who serve as teachers, from college to Kindergarten, are ramping up our preparation for the upcoming term. In my home university, new faculty are arriving on campus this week for onboarding, next week will be devoted to faculty meetings at the university and college level,…

One of the first questions I ask students in my Christian Legal Thought seminar is what they expect Christianity might have to say about law. A common answer is that Christian teaching can provide guidance about what the legal rules should be.  Many of my students have been taught the importance of having a Christian…

A few years back, one of my literature classes read Misha Nogha’s “Chippoke Na Gomi,”Misha Nogha, “Chippoke Na Gomi,” The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction (Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2010), 630-636. an intriguing and provocative science fiction story exploring the repercussions of atomic weaponry and the responsibilities we have to one another.This article first…