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“God Don’t Make No Junk” 

After a good conversation on genetics with a dear colleague, I started pondering the following question: Isn’t it interesting how one’s training and worldview make such a vast difference in an approach to a topic? One thought led to another, and this is where I landed…  Even though the idea about differing worldviews can be applied to almost every topic in our world and our lives, I want to zero in on human genetics. That is, to consider the long sections of DNA that…
February 10, 2026
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“Save Time with AI”: How Software Disciples Us

I offer you a close reading of a single line of text that startled me as I was perusing a seventeenth-century educational treatise. I am sitting at a writing retreat, drafting a research paper. Those who know me would be unsurprised to learn that the PDF open on my screen contains a work by John…
February 9, 2026
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A Review of Becoming the Pastor’s Wife

Becoming the Pastor’s Wife gets interesting immediately, with its subtitle: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman’s Path to Ministry. When was ordination ever a common path for women? Hasn’t “pastor’s wife” always been the Christian ideal? Beth Allison Barr, professor of history at Baylor University, delves into the intrigue evoked by the book’s cover…
February 5, 2026
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Toward a Language of Creation: AI and the Dominion Mandate (Part II)

Part 2 – A Technological Partnership in the Academy The modern university has taken responsibility (we might call it a dominion mandate) for instructing generations in critical thought, writing, communication, and skill training, confirming the proficiencies of the students under our care. Our work has focused largely on certification, and AI practically eliminates that priority.…
February 4, 2026

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Chronological Snob No More

I have recently realized that, despite my best intentions, I am guilty of chronological snobbery. It is a humbling—but helpful—understanding. It has helped me to make sense out of my own bewilderment over these past few years. Let me explain. I teach British literature, specializing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (but like most professors,…
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Guest Post: Student “Success” – A Christian Reflection on Modern Definitions

This post was adapted from a longer white paper for Christian practitioners working in student success offices. For those interested in joining the conversation, please contact Sinda Vanderpool at Sinda_Vanderpool@baylor.edu. Helping students achieve “success” is an increasingly important topic within the research and practice of higher education. In addition to helping students accomplish personal goals,…
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The Relationship between Live Sports and Live Church

In the UK we are emerging from our latest (and, we hope, final) COVID lockdown. Like creatures unused to daylight we blink in the face of the brightness of our new freedoms. And in some cases, wonder whether the darkness we have become used to might not be preferable, for the moment at least, to…
June 4, 2021
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The Matter of Mathematics

Portions of this blog were part of a longer essay with the same title that appeared in Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith (click here for the full article). Permission has been obtained for the duplications. Does faith matter in mathematics? Not according to the Swiss theologian Emil Brunner. In 1937 he suggested a way to view the…
June 3, 2021
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A Future Full of Living in the Past Progressive(ly)

I recently opened my daily New York Times morning e-mail to these sentences from David Leonhardt: “Good morning. The pandemic may now be in permanent retreat in the U.S.” A good morning indeed. With the changes in the CDC guidelines suggesting easing restrictions on mask wearing outside, and then inside, for those who are fully…
June 2, 2021
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Asking God the Overwhelming Questions about Pain, Suffering and Justice

The overwhelming questions. Earlier in the academic year, I noted that these have been “unsettling, chaotic, and disorienting times.”  It has been a year of endurance, tenacity and “completion” for our academic communities.  That the year was completed is a mark of success.   There has also tremendous sadness, lament, and tragedy laced throughout our campuses. …
May 31, 2021
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Kind or Degree

The 2021 winner of the Templeton prize is Dr. Jane Goodall. Dr. Goodall is, of course, one of the most famous scientists in the world renowned for her 60-year-long work studying chimpanzees in Tanzania. Her warmth and humility have endeared her legions of fans and the results of her work have redefined our understanding of…
May 28, 2021
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God and Morality

When people in Christian circles find out I am a moral philosopher, they are often eager to talk about how God’s existence is crucial to morality in some way. I hear a lot of, “Well if God doesn’t exist then there can’t be any such thing as right and wrong” and, “If Christianity weren’t true,…
May 27, 2021