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Legal Scholarship for the Kingdom

The primary claims of the first edition of George Marsden’s book, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship, remain as salient and persuasive as they were thirty years ago: First, Christian academics may—I will argue should—be doing their scholarship from a Christian point of view (more shortly on what that might mean in practice), and second,…
May 30, 2025
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Building the Future of Christian Scholarship

The first edition of George Marsden’s book The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship appeared the same year I completed my doctorate. I eagerly read it and it immediately became a touchstone book for my early career. And so, it was with great enthusiasm that I began reading the second edition. How have the ideas aged?…
May 29, 2025
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Addressing Reductionistic “Nothing but” Scholarship: The Conversation around a New Definition of “Evangelical,” Part 2

I remember teaching a weekend course on American Christian history in the late 1990s. Since it was a weekend course for working adults, I used several videos in those late Saturday afternoon hours when eyes glazed and heads nodded. I found some great videos about the history of American Catholicism and African American Christianity, but…
May 28, 2025
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Addressing Reductionistic “Nothing but” Scholarship: The Conversation around a New Definition of “Evangelical,” Part 1

Christian scholars interested in Christ-animated learning have long observed that one major danger to such scholarship is reductionism. George Marsden helpfully summarized the problem in his book, The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship, “Once we have a convincing explanation at the level of empirically researched connections we are inclined to think we have a complete…
May 27, 2025

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Belated Happy Earth Day (and many more)

I have never missed an Earth Day. That’s only because I was fourteen on April 22, 1970 when the whole thing started. I generally don’t make a big deal out of the annual observance, any more than Presidents Day or College Department Chairs Day (there must be one, right?). It’s not that I don’t care…
May 13, 2021
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Searching For the Soul of the University: An Interview with George M. Marsden

Risking understatement, George M. Marsden’s The Soul of the American University: From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief sparked intense reactions in academe when released by Oxford University Press in 1994.For example, please see John Patrick Diggins’ “God, Man and the Curriculum,” The New York Times  (April 17, 1994, Section 7, Page 25).  Administrators of church-related…
May 12, 2021
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The Flourishing Teacher: An Interview with Christina Bieber Lake

I once heard a seasoned professor talk about curating his summer reading, intentionally including at least one book about teaching. If you’re similarly inclined, add Christina Bieber Lake’s The Flourishing Teacher: Vocational Renewal for a Sacred Profession to your list.Christian Bieber Lake, The Flourishing Teacher: Vocational Renewal for a Sacred Profession (Downers Grove, IL: IVP…
May 11, 2021
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Psalm 8 includes Computers

The moon and stars, flocks and herds, wild animals, birds and fish. Psalm 8 lists each of these as part of God’s creation. But how do computers fit into creation? To begin, Psalm 8 is a song of praise to God, the “creator of heaven and earth.” The psalm then goes on to list aspects…
May 10, 2021
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The Tragic Academic Neglect of Mothers’ Impact: And a Christian Remembrance and Call for Change

We cannot count on academics to study the most important realities in our lives (versus the latest academic fad). Motherhood is one of those important realities. Noble Laureate and University of Chicago economist James J. Heckman recently made this astounding observation, “hat we don’t have—and to me, it’s an amazing deficiency—we don’t any good economic…
May 7, 2021
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Prostitution and the Limits of Economic Reasoning

In my capacity as host of the podcast Faithful Economy, I recently had the opportunity to interview Scott Cunningham, an economist at Baylor, about his work related to markets for prostitution. Albeit a bit reluctantly, Scott made a powerful case for at least partial legalization of prostitution. You can listen to our conversation here. I…
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May 6, 2021
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The Emergence of Remix Culture

From Carl Trueman’s The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self to Kristen DuMez’s Jesus and John Wayne, from Beth Allison Barr’s The Making of Biblical Womanhood to Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry’s Taking America Back for God and Sarah Posner’s Unholy, a spate of illuminating (if controversial and contested) cultural histories have been published…
May 3, 2021
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Choosing How to Explain The Choice A Virus Makes

In the preface of his book, A Genetic Switch, famed molecular biologist Mark Ptashne writes regarding his beloved virus, named lambda, “The lambda life cycle is a paradigm for this problem: the virus chooses one or another mode of growth depending upon extracellular signals, and we understand in considerable detail the molecular interactions that mediate…
April 30, 2021