Skip to main content
Blog

The Creed and a Christian Worldview

Anniversaries matter. If you’re a cancer survivor, each year of remission offers a fresh lease on life. If you’re married, every annual commemoration of your wedding is an opportunity to recommit to your vows. Your work anniversary may include a bonus or raise. The anniversary of a loved one’s death summons both grief and remembrance.…
June 27, 2025
Blog

How Coaching Youth Sports Helped My Thinking about Christian Character

The most important activity that helped refine my view of character education was not taking classes on epistemology and ethics from Dallas Willard. Nor was it taking all my other Ph.D. classes that addressed virtue or moral development. It was coaching youth league sports. Granted, readings in philosophy, ethics, and theology led me to recognize…
June 25, 2025
Blog

AI and the Grammar of Descent

Recently, there’s been even more press than usual about AI proliferation and its associated risks. The hype has been driven, in part, by the now infamous Ross Douthat interview with Daniel Kokotajlo, executive director of the A.I. Futures Project, in which Kokotajlo suggests that AI could take over civilization—and “then kill all the humans”—by 2027.…
June 24, 2025

Subscribe

for new content notifications, access to video and audio conversations with our writers, and invitations to our events.

Blog

Benefits of Lunch Outside the Office: A Response

“Grab drinks?  We don’t even share the same elevators!” For the past five years, in addition to being a professor of communication, I’ve served as co-director of Biola University’s Winsome Conviction Project that seeks to open lines of communication between people entrenched in ideological, political, or theological disagreements.  When I was asked to respond to…
February 27, 2025
Blog

Lunching Alone

It’s an odd thing to reflect on the meaning of academics gathering for lunch when you’re an academic on sabbatical. I relish so much about these occasional sabbaths from teaching: the time to rest and recharge, the opportunity to enjoy our twins’ first months in high school, the chances to travel and do research. Still,…
February 26, 2025
Blog

An Empirical Examination of Dougherty’s Unified Field Theory of Lunch

In a commencement address to La Salle University, Peter J. Dougherty culled the most precious piece of wisdom from his 53 years of professional expertise to impart to graduating students. Just four words: meet often for lunch. In fact, let’s make it Lunch, a long, slow, enjoyable time at a sit-down restaurant. Getting together with…
February 25, 2025
Blog

In Praise of Lunch

Editor’s Note: This past year we enjoyed reading Peter J. Dougherty’s essay “In Praise of Lunch.”  The essay inspired CSR’s Publisher, Todd Ream, to organize a series of responses to his article.  Thus, today’s post reprints the essay with his permission. Then, over the next three days, we will post three responses from different faculty.…
February 24, 2025
Blog

Between Two Worlds: Safety, Suffering, and the Cross

I remember the dissonance I felt when I was invited to join a prayer meeting organized by Wheaton’s Politics and International Relations Department soon after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Masked and socially distanced, we gathered in a calm setting to pray for the people of Ukraine—huddled in basements and subways…
February 20, 2025
Blog

A Liturgy for the Writing of Citations

Liturgies and daily prayers have long been part of Christian practice. The Psalms and the Lord’s Prayer are two prominent examples from the Bible, but church history also tells of the development of prayer books, books of hours, and the Book of Common Prayer. These aids helped the faithful meditate on scripture and Christian principles…
February 18, 2025
Blog

Awe’s Power to Diminish Us (and That’s a Good Thing)

While Colorado is known for having 50 mountains that exceed 14,000 feet, my home state of Washington boasts its own mountainous claims, with nearly 100 reaching mile-high peaks. Yet one among them stands out. At 14,409 feet and 60 miles southeast of Seattle, Mt. Rainier is simply known as “the mountain.” In a city that…
February 12, 2025
Blog

An Excellent Conversation

Some months ago, I rode to the airport with Uber, as I have done many times before and since. I noticed before the car arrived that the driver had high ratings for “excellent conversation.” Sure enough, it was not long before he started raising topics for discussion. He was driving for Uber on his day…
February 11, 2025