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Theological Foundations for Creation Care: Replacing Apathy and Despair with Hope and Christian Virtues — A Review Essay (Part 1)

Andrew J. Spencer’s and Steven Bouma-­Prediger’s recent releases applying Christian theology to contemporary environmental problems share similar goals and face common constraints. As trade paperbacks, both books are intended to motivate an indifferent or skeptical Christian readership and theologically equip students to address hot-­button political topics. The authors self-­identify as Evangelical, utilize the language of…
December 11, 2024
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Shaping Witnesses: Baylor’s English Graduate Program

In the past year or so, six graduates of Baylor University’s English graduate program have published books about the arts of reading well and the value of forming Christian imaginations. Jessica Hooten Wilson (grad of 2009) published Reading for the Love of God: How to Read as a Spiritual Practice (Jessica has also published several…
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Sharing Our Screens

Recently I re-watched The Truman Show, the 1998 film about a man, played by Jim Carey, who discovers that his life has been broadcast to the world as a reality TV show. Though produced a quarter of a century ago, the movie’s critique of an “always-on,” surveillant media culture felt timely and spoke to my…
December 9, 2024
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Not Quite Exiles nor Never Much of an Eden: The Meaning of Vocation for the Professorate Thirty Years after the Publication of Mark Schwehn’s Exiles from Eden

The early 1990s saw a rash of books on religion and higher education, and Mark Schwehn’s 1993 Exiles From Eden: Religion and the Academic Vocation in America was a book unlike any of the rest. It begins with two memorable illustrations of the central problem Schwehn addresses. The first recalls a faculty get-­together at the…
December 5, 2024
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Be the Hope You Seek

A friend asked me not so long ago, “Where can we find hope in such uncertain times?” Many of us have been asking this reasonable and pressing question for much of the past five years. As Christians, we can easily recite a couple of the 140 Bible verses that, in various different stories and admonitions,…
December 4, 2024
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Christ-Animated Scholarship and Human Worth

Every once in a while, I come across an article or book that exemplifies the best of what Christ-animated scholarship can and should be. I recently came across one such article in the field of psychology that addressed the topic of human worth. The concepts of self-worth and self-esteem have a long history in the…
December 3, 2024

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Trusting God in Crossing Race and Ethnic Boundaries

(Book Review: Sherwood Lingenfelter, Teamwork Cross-Culturally: Christ-Centered Solutions for Leading Multinational Teams. Baker Academic, 2022). In a world where just a word (not to mention phrases, topics, or modes of interaction) may cause offense or even trauma, perhaps the safer course may be to keep to ourselves and at least do no harm. The very…
August 25, 2022
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Defending the Faith or Defeating the Faithful?: Christian Philosophy and the Practice of Self-Reflection

“Exvangelicalism” is a relatively new term for a much older phenomenon: those who’ve been raised as evangelicals coming to realize that they no longer identify as such, and intentionally reckoning with the continuing impact of that tradition in their lives. Philosophers have not had much to say about this phenomenon – until now.  The Evangelical Philosophical Society sponsored the panel “Exvangelicalism and Evangelical Philosophy”…
August 23, 2022
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Rugged Dreams: What Today’s Students Lack

“…they want to hang on to different parts of religion that they find to be beneficial to their lives—but strictly on their terms.”Melinda Lundquist Denton and Richard Flory, Back Pocket God: Religion and Spirituality in the Lives of Emerging Adults (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 226. - Description of Emerging Adults When I met…
August 22, 2022
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COVID: Me, Not Me, and Freedom in Christ.

On June 1st, while driving to meet family for brunch on a beautiful Sunday morning, tiredness overcame me. I told my husband I would drop him off, return home to take a little nap, and pick him up a couple of hours later. Once home, I made a beeline to the couch. I didn’t read…
August 19, 2022
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The Importance Of How We Describe

“The way in which we describe the world determines what we think we see. What we think we see determines how we act on what we think we see. Descriptions matter.” This summer I had the privilege to hear Dr. John Swinton speak. He is Chair of Divinity and Religious Studies at the University of…
August 18, 2022
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Decolonizing the Integration of Faith and Learning

A little while back, I attended two different conference presentations where colleagues within the Christian academy were presenting on the topic of integrating faith and learning (IFL). In both cases, I was eager to hear the presenter’s thoughts and to pick up some ideas that I could incorporate into my own teaching practice. Instead, as…
August 17, 2022
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Higher Education’s Neglect of Moral Expertise

“Most social situations are not moral, because there is no conflict between the role-taking expectations of one person and another.”—Lawrence KohlbergLawrence Kohlberg, The Philosophy of Moral Development: Moral Stages and the Idea of Justice, Essays on Moral Development (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1981), 1:143. As mentioned in yesterday's post, early in the history of…
August 12, 2022
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Virtue Theory without God and God’s Revelation Is Never Enough: Jonathan Edwards vs Thomas Clap

In 1765 two early presidents of American colonial colleges made their last ethical stands in the form of two published writings. In many respects, both writings maintained the counter-cultural elements that comprised the thinking of early Puritans. Neither author even mentioned Aristotle or Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics in these last works, the author and text that…
August 11, 2022