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BlogReviews

A Review of David I. Smith, Everyday Christian Teaching: A Guide to Practicing Faith in the Classroom

David I. Smith’s most recent book, Everyday Christian Teaching: A Guide to Practicing Faith in the Classroom, represents yet another of his significant and vital contributions to Christian education. Commencing with an invitation to wisdom for teachers and their students, Smith offers philosophical insights along with practical strategies for authentically integrating faith into teaching practices.…
September 5, 2025
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A Call to (Christian) Excellence

One way to understand the evolution of popular management publications over the last 50 years is to see it as beginning with a reaction to the struggles of American manufacturing in the 1970s. Shocked by the oil embargo and an invasion of cheaper, more efficient foreign imports, US car manufacturers attempted to adapt quickly but…
September 4, 2025
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Are You Trying to Create Experts or Mentor Students toward Excellence? The Two Are Not the Same

One factor behind the recent populist revolt in North America and other parts of the world stems from an increasing distrust of various experts (esp. medical scientists, journalists, and general scientists). There are numerous reasons for this distrust—some of them consistent with a Christian theological perspective, but other reasons have led to a problematic undermining…
September 3, 2025
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Not a Prize to Be Sought,but a Calling to Be Lived (A Response to Paul R. Yost)

With God are wisdom and strength, he has counsel and understanding.” —Job 12:13 I greatly appreciate Paul Yost’s poignant and generous review of The Crucibles that Shape Us.Gayle D. Beebe, The Crucibles that Shape Us: Navigating the Defining Challenges of Leadership (InterVarsity, 2024). He accurately amplifies what I hoped to identify and communicate while noting…
August 29, 2025

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Learning to Love the Unlovable: Being Schooled by Students

Our students are often our best teachers. Their actions often expose the ungodly perspectives and habits that have accumulated on us like barnacles on a ship. I encountered two stories while coding interviews from Baylor students that reminded me that I have some barnacles from difficult experiences about loving the unlovable.   If I had been…
August 5, 2021
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Who was Herman Bavinck? An Interview with James Eglinton

Herman Bavinck was a late 19th and early 20th century theologian whose work has been attracting renewed attention by Christian scholars. A 2020 book published by Baker Academic about his life titled Bavinck: A Critical Biography, was written by James Eglinton, the Meldrum Senior Lecturer in Reformed Theology at the University of Edinburgh. What follows…
August 4, 2021
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Returning to Campus, In Person

As many of us return to physical campuses this fall, mostly without masks, we are following the advice of classic sociologists: humans need proximity. It’s worth the trouble to regain this aspect of pre-pandemic life. As for me, I anticipate seeing students again with joy, but being on campus also brings the strong possibility of…
August 3, 2021
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Home

Editor's Note: Due to an early morning link problem with the e-mail sent Thursday, we are resending Katie Kressar's post Friday, July 23rd as well.  In addition, the Christ Animating Learning Blog will take a one week vacation next week. We will return on August 2nd.  Thanks, PLG Like many academics, I’m a small-town kid…
July 22, 2021
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How Southern Honor Corrupted American Higher Education: A Christian Critical History and Alternative to Honor Codes

Universities, including Christian ones, have become quite comfortable with what some might describe as the “virtue” of honor. Although we may instinctively classify it as a favorable trait, honor—as it exists on college campuses today—has a troubled backstory. What is more, today’s faculty and administrators who esteem honor may not know about its contentious history.…
July 21, 2021
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Grieving the (Possible) Loss:

What I Love about South Korea Study Abroad, and Why It Might Not Be the Same Again My home state of Washington just declared a “full re-opening” and a return to a (new) normal. As a result, I can see relief on the faces of those around me as we Washingtonians attempt to remember what…
July 20, 2021
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Guest Post: A Well-Read Life

I have designed my ethics class to interweave ethical reflection (theory) with formation (practice), in part by thematically pairing readings with spiritual exercises. One such pairing includes Aquinas’s account of the virtue of love (Summa theologiae II-II q. 25-27) and a week of repeated contemplation of the apostle Paul’s hymn of love in I Corinthians…
July 19, 2021
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Teaching as a Call to Becoming

In teaching Biblical studies, I have come to view the integration of faith and learning less as a movement from doing to becoming and more as a process from being to becoming. It is less a movement from something to another, and more a maturation process, the transformation of one’s identity, brought about through the…
July 16, 2021
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On Humility, or, Christianity as Bull-dung

In a post engagingly entitled “Academic Freedom: From Ram-skit to Bull-dung,” Crystal Downing relates how a professor bragged about telling students, “Christianity is ‘bull-dung’ and that’s not opinion; it’s fact.” My immediate thought was that this was indeed an inspired metaphor for the faith whose God was born in a stable. Like the crown of thorns,…
July 15, 2021