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Beyond Civility: The Call to Intellectual Hospitality

The conversation began, as it often does, with conviction. In my undergraduate criminal justice classroom, we were discussing the death penalty. One student spoke with certainty about justice as retribution—grounded, she explained, in her understanding of Scripture. Across the room, another student responded just as firmly, articulating a vision of justice rooted in restoration, also…
April 16, 2026
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Book Review of Follow Your Bliss and Other Lies about Calling

Finding one’s calling is a rich, complex journey. Honesty “about the ups and downs of calling will open up conversation” that fosters contemplating more meaningful and purposeful lives (16). That is one of the primary aims of Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore’s recent book. Utilizing faith, philosophy, and pragmatism, she pushes back on the pop culture notion of…
April 15, 2026
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Chasing AI: Wisdom and Responsibility for Christian Educators

As an educational psychologist, I study teachers and students, both of whom are learners in their own ways. As artificial intelligence (AI) burgeons in classrooms, I cannot help but think of Romans as a possible answer to the question Benjamin Bloom posed more than four decades ago. Roughly, Bloom’s question was: “How can we deliver…
April 14, 2026
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The “What” of Christian Scholar’s Review

Last week, Margaret Diddams discussed the important mission that guides Christian Scholar’s Review (CSR)—the “why.” As someone who studies Christian higher education, I also find that faithful institutions have theologically rich and informed mission statements. Unfortunately, many Christian institutions with great mission statements do not consistently demonstrate the operationalization of that mission in all they…
April 13, 2026
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Finding God in Engineering: The Shape is the Key

In the first post, I shared a story about Mike Mulligan that shaped me. In this one, I want to share the story that shaped my current approach to engineering education. It’s the story of how the t-shaped engineer came to be, and how a quiet theological correction helped me see its deeper truth. The…
April 10, 2026

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The Two Scandals of Christianity

From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This…
September 20, 2022
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A Liberal Non-Christian and a Conservative Christian Scholar in Civil Dialogue: Part 2

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from Hank Reichman and Karen Swallow Prior’s dialogue originally printed in the Academe Blog (an AAUP publication).  We have reprinted a portion of it with permission.  HR: In my Understanding Academic Freedom (p. 102-03), I discussed a professor’s refusal to write a letter of reference for a student seeking to study…
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The Beauty of Losing Control of Your Teaching

Seven years ago, I took a teaching sabbatical in Burundi. When I set foot on U.S. soil again, I had the exact opposite of a sense of accomplishment. This ambivalence would continue. In fact, I’m still processing it now. Just this month, a faculty workshop reminded me of this when slides warned of the inevitable…
September 15, 2022
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Don’t Take the Punches

In my life, there’s a lot of beating up going on. Personally, there’s the matter of my illness. As a recent survivor of stage 3B cancer, I get batteries of scans and blood tests every few months. Sometimes the numbers are alarming, and they feel like a punch to the gut. My whole self –…
September 13, 2022
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Are We Living in a Christ-Animating Simulation?

“For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.” -Colossians 1:16 One of the laboratory procedures we teach to first-year general chemistry students involves measuring the wavelengths of the visible emission…
September 12, 2022
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Is Your Hospitality Secularizing Your Teaching?

Having taken part in numerous Christian faculty or staff development conversations, I notice one key issue in these conversations: Christian educators have often absorbed a liberal democratic way of thinking about hospitality. As a result, they open themselves and their institutions to secularization since they practice the liberal democratic virtue of hospitality instead of the…
September 9, 2022
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Teaching in a Post-Covid World

The COVID years have been tough ones for educators. I am in my thirty-second year as an English professor at Houston Baptist University (HBU), and, though I have weathered many economic, political, and pedagogical storms, I can’t remember having lived through such an intense and extended period of anxiety and uncertainty. In addition to the…
September 8, 2022
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Welcome to the Metaverse

Imagine being able to teleport anywhere, change your appearance, ride a dragon, or build your own fantasy home. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook (now named “Meta”), recently announced the creation of “the metaverse,” an immersive virtual world in which you can do all these things. The term “metaverse” was coined in a 1990s novel titled…
September 6, 2022
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A Failure of Stewardship: The Problem with General Education

“ has been one of those places where we have told ourselves who we are.”Frederick Rudolph, Curriculum, A History of the American Undergraduate Course of Study since 1636 (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1977), 1. —Frederick Rudolph One of the odd things about most forms of general education is how they fail to prepare students for…
September 2, 2022