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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…
December 10, 2024
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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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Is the Future of Protestant Higher Education Low-Church?

Sometimes it is interesting to take stock of the field of Christian higher education.  A research team I lead recently put together a spreadsheet of all the Protestant institutions in America that require students to take at least one course that addresses the Christian tradition (and not simply religion generally). There are 249 such Protestant…
June 3, 2022
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Having Christ Animate Your School Office

Be  shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve; not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. – 1 Peter 5:2-3 (NIV) We often think…
June 2, 2022
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Book Review – Refuge Reimagined: Biblical Kinship in Global Politics

Policymakers (and therefore, citizens) in modern democracies confront a knot of intertwining problems, from climate change to nuclear proliferation to terrorism. Many of the threads have formed a rope called human migration, as drought, political instability or corruption, and neocolonial economic policies by the major powers interlace to drive seventy million (and counting) refugees from…
May 31, 2022
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Marriage as a Required Liberal Art

As most any study of general education will tell you, students do not find general education engaging. As this study from the Harvard General Education Review Committee found, “Students report not taking their Gen Ed courses as seriously as other courses.” Yet, “Students wish more Gen Ed courses were worth taking seriously.” I think the problem is…
May 27, 2022
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Guest Post – Have We Become Moral Relativists About Gentleness?

A recent article by James Wood recounts his evolution from a fanboy of Tim Keller to a critic. His argument sparked a flurry of responses, both positive and negative.To offer just a few: David French, “A Critique of Tim Keller Reveals the Moral Devolution of the New Christian Right,” https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/a-critique-of-tim-keller-reveals; Rod Dreher, “Tim Keller &…
May 26, 2022
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Guest Post – A Response to Christian Education for Librarianship

Gregory Smith’s recent blogs concerning the need for graduate programs in library science based on a Christian worldview are well written and thoughtfully presented both in his rationale and his outlining the advantages and the challenges. Smith has championed this philosophy for many years. As the library profession becomes increasingly more secular, liberal, and woke,…
May 25, 2022
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The Word that Doesn’t Wear Out

In my work as a pre-med advisor, I help students navigate the pictures and words medical schools use to recruit students. Each school has a website and promotional materials making their case that they’re a good fit for YOU, the reader. One paradox of the Internet Age though is that the more information is available,…
May 24, 2022
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Avoiding the Academic Tendency to Generalize about Virtue: Why Virtue Education and Practice Must Be Specific, Part 2

As Friday’s post mentioned, virtue education is not effectively accomplished in a liberal arts classroom education. It requires what the foremost expert on excellence, Anders Ericsson, called deliberate practice. One of the keys Ericsson found to deliberate practice in a particular endeavor is to improve one’s mental representations. He defines a mental representations as “a…
May 23, 2022