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Preliminary Thoughts on Sport, Theology, and Trauma (Part 3): Theological and Psychological Perspectives on Trauma

Deborah van Deusen Hunsinger, emerita professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and author of Spiritual Trauma Care: Theology and Psychology in Dialogue, is one of America’s leading pastoral theologians. Her latest book brings the latest trauma theory and empirical findings into conversation with Christian theology. Hunsinger states that the “overriding purpose of the book is to…
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Preliminary Thoughts on Sport, Theology, and Trauma (Part 2): Social-­Scientific and Methodological Perspectives on Researching Trauma in Sports

Our review of the literature yielded no publications specifically on a theological and psychological understanding of trauma in sports, aside from an interview with Rachael Denhollander and a book and two articles that touch on trauma-­related issues in sports from a Christian perspective (e.g., resilience and identity). There are several publications from the fields of…
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Echoes of the Genuinely Human

During my “tween” years, I devoured novels about Christian boys of my age. For example, I read most, if not all, of the Moody Press thirty-six-volume series about the Sugar Creek Gang, a group of boys who encouraged each other in maintaining their shared Christian identity. Even though I am grateful for the “wholesome” image…
July 27, 2026
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Christian Higher Education at a Crossroads

Ron Highfield's The Christian University and the Academic Establishment arrives at a particularly fraught moment in the history of American higher education. Confidence in the university as an institution has eroded dramatically. Political polarization has drawn colleges and universities into broader cultural conflicts. Debates over academic freedom, diversity initiatives, institutional mission, free speech, and ideological…
July 23, 2026

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Atypical Conversations with Students about Their Research Projects

When I was a doctoral student, one mentor secretly sent their friend (another professor) to my poster at a professional conference to ask the most difficult methodological and statistical questions about my research content. I think my mentor viewed this as an initiation of some kind to the academic presentation experience. Suffice it to say,…
May 23, 2024
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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