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Intellectual Pilgrimage: Christians in the Contemporary Academy

The Outrageous Idea of Christian Scholarship became an instant classic when it was released by Oxford University Press in 1997, but I must admit that I always disliked the title. While it is an effective attention-­grabber, the text itself is far more nuanced and polite than the title presages. Additionally, the word “outrageous” conveys neither…
May 22, 2025
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Catholic vs. Protestant

“In the one Christ, we are one.”                                          -motto of Pope Leo XIV The Catholic Church has recently elected a new pope, not quite three weeks after the death of Pope Francis on Easter Monday. Meanwhile, I have been thinking about Christian education in the city of Seattle, where I teach at a Protestant university…
May 21, 2025
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Renaissance Man: Charlie Peacock’s Memoir Drives Deep into Evangelicalism’s Historic Twentieth-Century Turn

A real renaissance is hard to come by. No birth is easy, let alone a rebirth. But that’s what American evangelicals experienced—that’s what they accomplished—from the mid-twentieth century through the opening decades of the twenty first: renaissance. Joel Carpenter describes the initial stirrings of this vast movement, in the aftermath of the 1925 Scopes Trial, with…
May 19, 2025
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The Anxious Generation: A Christian Educator’s Reflection: Part II

In "The Anxious Generation: A Christian Educator’s Reflection," I explored insights from Jonathan Haidt's book from a Christian perspective. I specifically paralleled the rise of anxiety among young people with the concepts of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration, demonstrating how these themes could enrich Haidt’s analysis. In his book, Haidt offers a way to reverse…
May 15, 2025

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Naughty Gnosticism and Film Scholarship

I ended my last post suggesting “the relevance of cinema to Christian orthodoxy.” What exactly does this mean? On one level the answer is easy: award-winning films have portrayed dedication to Christ with respect, such as The Mission (1986, Roland Joffé) and the recently streamed A Hidden Life (2019, Terrence Malick), about a martyred Austrian,…
October 26, 2020
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The Passing of the Age of the Novel

For three centuries, the novel was the literary genre that expressed and shaped the modern condition more than any other literary form. A long prose narrative that focused on the ordinary life of an ordinary person, the early novel was the perfect form to express the newly emerging autonomous, ambitious individual. Of course, since the…
October 23, 2020
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Carrying Community as Educators

Two comments about courses of study separated by more than 80 years have me thinking again about the relational fabric of my classes in the time of COVID. One of the comments arose from the learning experiences created by German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer at the seminary he led at Finkenwalde in the late 1930s. Bonhoeffer…
October 21, 2020
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Blessing for Insult in Today’s Argument Culture, Seriously?

At a time when it seems we can’t agree on anything, 98% of Americans state that incivility is a serious problem; while 68% agree it’s reached crisis levels.  From cyberbullying, to hate speech, workplace harassment, demonizing political language, verbal abuse, and intolerance the vast majority of us (87%) no longer feel safe in public places…
October 19, 2020
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Guest Post – Title IX: Why Should Christians Care?

Generally, prior to a decade ago, when people heard “Title IX,” they thought of women’s sports. Now, we’ve equated Title IX with sexual violence. However, the topic of Title IX should not be reduced to either of these aforementioned issues. As the law states, “No person in the United States shall, on the basis of…
October 16, 2020
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Stewardship as an Environmental and Economic Ethic

One of the most powerful metaphors in Christian social thought is the idea of stewardship. It comes right out of Genesis, with the idea that God gives humans a job to do on earth, and in doing that job, we are serving God. The idea is used widely in writing about the environment, economics, and…
Steven McMullen Headshot
October 14, 2020
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On Museums and Monsters: Defining Art

What is art? I have my students answer this question every autumn, and every autumn I get a host of new answers. That’s because “art” is, and always has been, notoriously hard to define. Sometimes students’ answers revolve around the effects of art: “art is something that moves you in a certain way,” they might…
October 12, 2020
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An Abusive Relationship and Race Relations

In light of recent events, our blog contributor agreed that it would be timely to repost a parable he told in April. Let me tell you a story. There was a man and a woman who were married. They were married for 15 years. But it was a horrible marriage. The husband was very abusive…
October 9, 2020
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Connecting Bytes and Christian Beliefs

Technology has been a common theme in my life. The passion began early with building crystal radios and other electronic projects, then moving on to experimenting with ham radio and delighting in the world of early personal computers. My interest in technology drew me to study engineering at a large, respected, engineering school. After graduating…
October 7, 2020
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Teaching During Pandemic: Help!

I’ve been teaching for a hundred years, and this one is the most difficult. Every day I receive marketing emails from textbook and educational service companies; one offered free resources to "help deliver content during this difficult time." Thanks, but no thanks. I'm not a delivery person (nor a service provider, nor a learning manager).…
October 5, 2020