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“God Don’t Make No Junk” 

After a good conversation on genetics with a dear colleague, I started pondering the following question: Isn’t it interesting how one’s training and worldview make such a vast difference in an approach to a topic? One thought led to another, and this is where I landed…  Even though the idea about differing worldviews can be applied to almost every topic in our world and our lives, I want to zero in on human genetics. That is, to consider the long sections of DNA that…
February 10, 2026
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“Save Time with AI”: How Software Disciples Us

I offer you a close reading of a single line of text that startled me as I was perusing a seventeenth-century educational treatise. I am sitting at a writing retreat, drafting a research paper. Those who know me would be unsurprised to learn that the PDF open on my screen contains a work by John…
February 9, 2026
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A Review of Becoming the Pastor’s Wife

Becoming the Pastor’s Wife gets interesting immediately, with its subtitle: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry. When was ordination ever a common path for women? Hasn’t “pastor’s wife” always been the Christian ideal? Beth Allison Barr, professor of history at Baylor University, delves into the intrigue evoked by the book’s cover…
February 5, 2026
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Toward a Language of Creation: AI and the Dominion Mandate (Part II)

Part 2 – A Technological Partnership in the Academy The modern university has taken responsibility (we might call it a dominion mandate) for instructing generations in critical thought, writing, communication, and skill training, confirming the proficiencies of the students under our care. Our work has focused largely on certification, and AI practically eliminates that priority.…
February 4, 2026

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Guest Post – Thoughts on engaging a fluid culture with fluid dynamics in Christian education

What role should faith play in Christian education? This philosophical question regularly results in divisive dialogue in certain scholarly circles and—for newly minted faculty—instills a degree of confusion around the gravity of the issue. Under the weight of the school year, it grows easier to jettison this all-important question as pursuing the right funding, pedagogy,…
March 4, 2022
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Soviet Tanks and the Good News: for Reflection on Mark 16:15

We were aboard the Fyodor Dostoevsky, in port on the Moscow River, just after returning from an early morning visit to Red Square, where we had been puzzled by why it was completely devoid of visitors. Our guide, Natasha, had queried a lone soldier who said it had been cleared for a movie production. As…
March 3, 2022
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Guest Post – Lament as a Christian Pedagogical Tool

Editor’s Note: In light of Ash Wednesday and this time of repentance, confession, and lament before Easter, we will be hosting once a week posts on the theme of lament. Around the time of the Great Recession, wildfires were burning in the county where I lived in Southern California. In the early autumn, the Santa Ana…
March 2, 2022
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Faith in the Invisible and the Nature of Reality

When I was a teenager, I remember hearing the question “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound? At the time, I thought, “What a stupid question—of course it makes a sound.” But the longer I teach science, and the more I learn about…
March 1, 2022
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The Christian Scholar’s Review Winter 2022 Issue

With today’s blog, I am pleased to introduce the Winter issue of Christian Scholar’s Review. As I write this, there’s not much winter left in the Pacific Northwest with the crocuses in bloom and hummingbirds fliting across my study’s window. But as has been the case with so much of our cattywampus pandemic lives, the…
February 28, 2022
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Teaching with Fire, Part 2: The Open Inner Core

In Part 1 of this essay, I argued that the structure of a flame is, at certain levels, similar to the structure of life. The flame suggests that human nature, and even divine nature, is self-gift with a purpose. The stress of burnout may be a sign that the gift is misaligned somehow. But once…
February 25, 2022
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Teaching with Fire, Part 1: Why It’s Easy to Burn Out

My friend left academia for industry last month. He posted online: “I spent years hearing how ‘flexible’ academic is but now disagree. How often did I tell my family things would ‘slow down’ after X? Academia was unstructured but not flexible. Structure (sick/vacation days!) with good management = flexibility.”Carpenter, Tom. Twitter post. January 25, 2022,…
February 24, 2022
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Guest Post – Embracing Limitations as Opportunity: A Communal Care Approach to the Adjunct Crisis

Like many others, last fall I read with interest, in Christian Scholar’s Review, scholars’ reflections on George Marsden’s The Soul of the American University Revisited and Marsden’s response. The experience was—in no particular order—encouraging, convicting, and depressing. At different points, I, likely along with others, saw reflections of both the successes and challenges of my…
February 23, 2022
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Keep Finding Your Identity in Christ: Responding to Sloppy Christian Reasoning about Identity

Christians should always reflect critically upon how we use theological language. Yet, we must recognize that sometimes our critical reflection can be corrupted by our cultural location. That is the problem with a recent web article, entitled, “Stop Finding Your Identity in Christ,” by Caleb Morell. The essay contains numerous fallacies and mistakes that provide…
February 22, 2022