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Empathy is Not a Bad Word, Really

"Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ." Galatians 6:2-3 is the foundation I use to introduce my research to students related to empathy. To me, the verse exemplifies empathy. Empathy is often defined as the ability to understand another’s emotions and experiences. What is often missing from this affective…
April 28, 2026

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Public Libraries as Places of Hope

I did not plan to start a career in in public libraries. In fact, when I applied for a job at my local library, my only intention was to make a bit of money during my last semester of seminary before jumping into “real ministry.” Of course, in his providence, God’s lessons and plans for…
October 24, 2022
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Star Shake, Glass Break, All to the Good

In the mythology of modern art, there are a few old chestnuts that get repeated again and again. There is the time Vincent van Gogh cut off his ear and then bore witness through confessional portraiture. There is the time Pablo Picasso unveiled his first masterpiece, Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, and declared it an “exorcism.” (For…
October 21, 2022
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A Few Words in Favor of Reticence

Reticence is not much of western virtue. In Shakespeare's King Lear, the words of Edgar, son of the Earl of Gloucester, to “speak as we feel, not what we ought to say” illustrate the tragic cost of withholding one’s authentic thoughts and feelings toward others and perhaps even more tragically from oneself. After all, pulling…
October 20, 2022
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Can Christian Higher Education Stay the Course?

Not far from our home in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, is one of southern Ontario's premier universities, McMaster, known internationally as a centre for advanced scientific and medical research. What few remember is that the university once had a connection with the Baptist Convention of Ontario and Québec, the only remnant of which is the presence…
October 13, 2022
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Author’s Response to Jenell Paris’ Review of Strangers and Scapegoats, Extending God’s Welcome to Those on the Margins

Strangers and Scapegoats is the culmination of some 20 years of my learning to think sociologically while teaching undergraduate students to cultivate their own sociological imaginations. The concept of imagination—of perceiving old things in new ways—plays a central role in the book, and is, for me, key to addressing the perennial problem of the stranger.…
October 11, 2022
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C.S. Lewis On Atomic Theory and the Cross of Christ

“It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.” Proverbs 25:2 (ESV)  In Europe, at the turn of the twentieth century, great advances were being made in atomic theory. In 1904, the British physicist and Nobel laureate Sir Joseph John Thomson, who had discovered the…
October 7, 2022