While trying to keep my feet as I hefted the burden of the academic semester onto my back this year, shocked again—just like every year—as to how heavy that weight can be, I received an email that had a new opportunity inside of it. It wasn’t even a direct ask. It was only a mention,…

Intercollegiate athletics are often assumed to be a vehicle for character formation without thoughtful consideration of empirical research or underlying pedagogies.Sean Strehlow, “Coaching for Christ: How Faith Informs Coaching and Christian Education,” Christian Scholar’s Review (blog), January 17, 2023, https://christianscholars.com/coaching-for-christ-how-faith-informs-coaching-and-christian-education/. In college athletic departments, resources surrounding spiritual formation in sports are similarly sparse. Although Christianity…

In our previous blog, we discussed how the image of God is our identity and how it helps to answer questions about who we are and how we organize ourselves as members of learning communities. Drawing insights from our doctoral seminar on philosophic issues in education, we provided an overview of some specific texts that…

Who am I? Who are you? Who are we? These are fundamental questions that define our identity and relationships with others. Answers to these questions help explain what matters for our existence. We often try to find value and meaning in external things, whether professional achievements, money, property, or influence over others. The search for…

Every year in my Contemporary Art class, I guide my students through a 1960s manifesto called Society of the Spectacle. Written by the angsty, art-adjacent theorist Guy Debord, it captures the philosophical energies informing contemporary fine art in a pithy and memorable way. Debord’s central thesis (informed by Marxist thought) is this: that modern society…

In yesterday’s post, I shared my journey through finding my way in faith and learning up through graduate school. As perhaps for many of us, I then wrestled through this crisis of faith for the next two years at the University of Chicago and then Northwestern. I found a sympathetic mentor for my PhD program,…

I recently took up an appointment at Samford University as Professor of Early American History after stepping down as Dean of Howard College of Arts and Sciences. I took great joy in serving in that role for seven years after coming to the university in July 2016 from my previous appointment as Associate Dean in…

I find myself writing this post from what I perceive to be a rather unique position. After serving as a librarian at a Christian university for nearly five years, I have recently accepted an appointment to teach theology and apologetics in the school of divinity at that same institution. Reflecting on my time as an…

This year marks 20 years since I became a full-time professor in Christian higher education. As I look back, I recognize two distinct stages in my academic life, not unlike the “two halves of life” described by the Franciscan priest Richard Rohr in his book Falling Upward. The first half of my career involved a…