Having worked at three different Christian colleges in my career, I have observed that discussions surrounding the core curriculum at Christian colleges can be cantankerous. Colleagues from other Christian universities have confirmed with me that core curriculum debates can set colleagues at odds. In fact, one professor I spoke with (at an institution that shall…

Last year I wrote about the possibility that Christians face religious discrimination in the United States. We are moving into a post-Christian society and this is reflected in increased expressions of anti-Christian bigotry. My research has confirmed that those with this bigotry are more likely to be white, male, wealthy, and well-educated. So, it is very well connected and…

In the midst of the fear and uncertainty of the pandemic, while trying to figure out how to give a genuine laboratory experience to students scattered around the world, I accidently developed a project that taught my students how to love. I was teaching a standard first semester biology course for science majors and pre-med…

And there is a second commandment, which seems to me even more incomprehensible and arouses even stronger opposition in me. It is: “Love thine enemies.”                                                                                     Sigmund FreudSigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents Trans. and Ed. James Strachey (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1961), 57. “…while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the…

“What do congregations have to teach scientists?” This was the question that James K. A. Smith, Professor of Philosophy at Calvin College, asked at a Scientists in Congregations, Scotland, conference in St Andrews some time ago. The theme of the conference was ‘Christ and Creation’, and the aim was to draw the conversation on science…

On this day, we remember the unjust murder of an innocent man. And he wasn’t innocent in just a legal way, or even a “religious commandment” sort of way. He was innocent in a child way, an infant way.  Though a grown man, with a man’s strength and a great scholar’s mind (of course he…

The legendary fall of Troy was precipitated by the horrific death of the priest Laocoön, whose warning not to take the Horse into the city was punished by two sea serpents strangling him and his sons.  The tragic scene came vividly to life in one of antiquity’s most famous statues (c. 200 BC), characterized by…

Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland debuted last month in select theaters and on Hulu. On Sunday it won Best Motion Picture Drama at the Golden Globes, and Zhao took home the prize for Best Director. The film stars Frances McDormand as Fern, a widow who moves from job to job, lives out of her white utility van,…

About a decade ago, a first-generation freshman came into my office for her first academic advising meeting. As we talked through her set of classes, I asked her in what she thought she would like to major. With downcast eyes and quiet voice, she told me that she had no idea. In that instant, I…

In February I posted a piece in which I wondered how we think about our students’ vocations and how that might affect how we teach. I pointed to a common Protestant theology of vocation. Christians have a primary vocation to love God in Christ and to love their neighbor. This is worked out through an…