Skip to main content
Blog

Theological Foundations for Creation Care: Replacing Apathy and Despair with Hope and Christian Virtues — A Review Essay (Part 1)

Andrew J. Spencer’s and Steven Bouma-­Prediger’s recent releases applying Christian theology to contemporary environmental problems share similar goals and face common constraints. As trade paperbacks, both books are intended to motivate an indifferent or skeptical Christian readership and theologically equip students to address hot-­button political topics. The authors self-­identify as Evangelical, utilize the language of…
December 11, 2024
Blog

Shaping Witnesses: Baylor’s English Graduate Program

In the past year or so, six graduates of Baylor University’s English graduate program have published books about the arts of reading well and the value of forming Christian imaginations. Jessica Hooten Wilson (grad of 2009) published Reading for the Love of God: How to Read as a Spiritual Practice (Jessica has also published several…
December 10, 2024
Blog

Sharing Our Screens

Recently I re-watched The Truman Show, the 1998 film about a man, played by Jim Carey, who discovers that his life has been broadcast to the world as a reality TV show. Though produced a quarter of a century ago, the movie’s critique of an “always-on,” surveillant media culture felt timely and spoke to my…
December 9, 2024
Blog

Not Quite Exiles nor Never Much of an Eden: The Meaning of Vocation for the Professorate Thirty Years after the Publication of Mark Schwehn’s Exiles from Eden

The early 1990s saw a rash of books on religion and higher education, and Mark Schwehn’s 1993 Exiles From Eden: Religion and the Academic Vocation in America was a book unlike any of the rest. It begins with two memorable illustrations of the central problem Schwehn addresses. The first recalls a faculty get-­together at the…
December 5, 2024
Blog

Be the Hope You Seek

A friend asked me not so long ago, “Where can we find hope in such uncertain times?” Many of us have been asking this reasonable and pressing question for much of the past five years. As Christians, we can easily recite a couple of the 140 Bible verses that, in various different stories and admonitions,…
December 4, 2024
Blog

Christ-Animated Scholarship and Human Worth

Every once in a while, I come across an article or book that exemplifies the best of what Christ-animated scholarship can and should be. I recently came across one such article in the field of psychology that addressed the topic of human worth. The concepts of self-worth and self-esteem have a long history in the…
December 3, 2024

Subscribe

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

Blog

A Biblical Precedent for Dissent

Late in the spring 2024 semester, several college campuses were rocked by student (and faculty) protests over the conflict in Gaza. More recently, the Chronicle of Higher Education broke a story about an instructor whose contract was not renewed after he had publicly opposed an increase in parking fees. On the surface, these events could…
August 2, 2024
Blog

The Song of the Law — Lessons from John Witte, Jr’s Table Talk

“For we live not only under the rule of law. We live also under the rhythm of law—the ebb and flow, the different paces and places for legal practice” (John Witte, Jr.) Introduction On June 18, 2024, a group of 100 deans of American law schools issued a simple and succinct letter outlining the responsibilities…
July 16, 2024
Blog

Fully Seen, Fully Known

Recently I walked with students among the self-portrait collection at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy. Most of these portraits were glamorous and proud, but a few were melancholy, desperate, even brutal. Some were fanciful, others despairing. Almost all faced outward as if to catch the eyes of passers-by and elicit recognition, acknowledgment, and sympathy.…
July 15, 2024
Blog

Review of Teaching for Spiritual Formation: A Patristic Approach to Christian Education in a Convulsed Age

Many valuable resources exist for Christian professors eager to integrate faith and learning in the classroom; however, I have found some of the best theological insight and practical guidance in a recent book directed toward classical Christian high school teachers. The book bears the intriguing title Teaching for Spiritual Formation: A Patristic Approach to Christian…
July 12, 2024
Blog

The University and Community Engagement: Recent Approaches

If we’re going to do this,” DeAmon Harges told me, “we’re going to have to become friends.” The condition set me back on my heels. Of course, I wasn’t opposed to getting to know this Indianapolis-based nonprofit leader, rapidly becoming a national figure in community development conversations. But though I was far from reluctant to…
July 11, 2024
BlogBook Review

All the Kingdoms of the World: On Radical Religious Alternatives to Liberalism

Kevin Vallier has written a valuable exposition and critique of what he describes as radical religious alternatives to liberalism. Vallier is an Eastern Orthodox political philosopher at Bowling Green State University and a strong defender of the liberal tradition in politics. Liberalism in this sense refers broadly to such things as constitutional government, respect for…
July 10, 2024
Blog

The Rush to Judgement about Canada’s Indigenous Schools’ “Grave Sites”:  What Christians Can Learn from Destructive Partiality – Part 2

I remember seeing the headlines and reading the stories while visiting relatives in Canada. In June of 2021, Sarah Beaulieu, an anthropologist who teaches at the University of the Fraser Valley, claimed to have found the graves of 215 Indigenous children at the site of a former Indigenous school in Kamloops British Columbia (later revised…
July 9, 2024
Blog

Faith & Business: Beyond Add-On Models

With the ability to captivate our hearts, awaken imaginations and paint pictures of what it means to be a good person, stories help form (and malform) character and influence behavior.For a recent and thoughtful account of how character is formed consciously and unconsciously, see James KA Smith’s Cultural Liturgies books series: Imaging the Kingdom, Desiring…
July 3, 2024