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Love for Truth: Pondering Dennis Hiebert’s Love-First Epistemology.

In the fundamentalist churches of my childhood, propositional truths were weapons of spiritual warfare, wielded to help your friends and harm your enemies. Propositional truths held the community together, and they held the world at bay. Disagreements about propositional truths split all three of the churches my family attended before I went off to college.…
April 24, 2025
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“When in the Boat Together” ft. the Council of Christian Colleges and Universities’ David A. Hoag I Saturdays at Seven – Special Episode

In this special episode of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with David A. Hoag, President of the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU). Hoag opens by discussing the investments Christian colleges and universities make in fostering relationship between faith and learning and how the CCCU is prepared to increase efforts…
April 23, 2025
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Pondering Truth and Love in Christian Life, Part III: Persons

The first post in this series pondered problematic modern Christian conceptions of truth, and the second pondered prescribed classic Christian practices of love, arguing for its priority. The focus in both was not on compelling truths about God, nor virtuous love of God or nature. Instead, the conundrum was what Christians believe to be true…
April 16, 2025
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Pondering Truth and Love in Christian Life, Part II: Love

Yesterday’s post unpacked the problematic character of modern positivist Christian conceptualization and prioritization of truth. Though truth undoubtably matters enormously, it was proposed that absolute truth about metaphysical matters is not attainable, that assertions of propositional truth claims are prone to exercising power and producing interpersonal alienation, and that in profound experiential (not necessarily epistemological)…
April 15, 2025
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Pondering Truth and Love in Christian Life

Part I: Truth My colleague had just finished delivering a public lecture on the challenge that intersex persons—those born with a mix of male and female organs, chromosomes, and hormones—present to the church. A perturbed member of the audience was expressing his disapproval of her call for the Christian church to understand, affirm, and welcome…
April 14, 2025

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What AIDS Theatre Can Teach Us in Critiquing Others

Race. Gender. Sexuality. Politics. Theology. Parenting. Vaccines. Mask wearing.All potential conversational landmines. What happens when you not only disagree with a person, but feel at odds with their deepest values?  In today’s combative communication climate, is it possible to critique that which is sacred to another person with gentleness and humility? The sacred, notes sociologist…
April 22, 2021
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Liberal Arts Hesitation: Being Honest about a Weakness with Liberal Arts Education

Editor’s Note: In this column and the two following I’m going to discuss how Christian scholar’s should have a different view of time and decision-making regarding current events. Unfortunately, scholars often confuse what events need an immediate decision or pronouncement and what needs patience and additional knowledge gathering before a decision.  As a Christian higher…
April 20, 2021
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A Chemist’s Spring Break, Part 2: It is Solved by Walking

In the first part of this post, I discussed the pressures academics face with a very literal metaphor: the pressure of the atmosphere all around us, intensified in the spring break (or “spring broken”) times of scarce resources. I also proposed that, in some elusive way, the universe is open to God’s power, perfected in…
April 16, 2021
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A Chemist’s Spring Break, Part 1: Systems Under Pressure

“Spring break” is a misnomer for faculty and staff at colleges on the quarter system like mine. One of my colleagues calls it “spring broken.” Most quarter systems require you to fit the latter two-thirds of your academic year into the first half of the calendar year. This compresses the time between Winter and Spring…
April 15, 2021
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Students and Vocation in the Present Tense: Part 3

This is the third in a series of reflections on student vocation. I began in February by dipping into Protestant theologies of vocation and noting that the Christian’s basic calling to love God and neighbor in Christ is to be worked out in whatever provisional, specific calling they find themselves in. I pointed out that…
April 14, 2021
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Professional Scoffers: The Vice of Academics

Happy are those Who do not follow the advice of the wicked, Or take the path that sinners tread, Or sit in the seat of scoffers; Ps. 1:1 (NRSV) Editor’s note: the theme of my earlier blogs have related to creation and our creation-based identities as individuals (e.g., imago dei) and professionals (our need for…
April 13, 2021
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The Betrayal of Certitude

A Christian liberal arts education should undermine certitude: something I learned from Dorothy L. Sayers, whose twelve radio plays about Jesus were so cherished by C. S. Lewis that he read them every year until he died. In my new book, Subversive: Christ, Culture, and the Shocking Dorothy L. Sayers (Broadleaf 2020), I recount how…
April 12, 2021
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Forging a Christian College Core Curriculum

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…
April 9, 2021