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Virtue-Spotting Spotting: A Conversation with an Undergraduate Researcher on Research and Christian Virtues

I (Paul Kim) love mentoring undergraduate research. Something about teaching undergraduate students to refine the academic and professional skills normally reserved for their more advanced counterparts, combined with the eagerness and appropriate level of fear that younger students might bring into the first-time experience of joining a research lab, makes the research mentoring experience uniquely…
May 8, 2026
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The Brazen Serpent: Healing Through Sacred Art

(The following is an excerpt from the author’s new book, Church Beautiful: Sacred Art and Spiritual Healing, available now from Cascade.) Finding What’s Missing We live in a broken culture. Levels of distrust and anger are high. Among young people, especially, clinical depression and anxiety are woefully common. Patterns of self-isolation – the deliberate “checking…
May 6, 2026
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Generative AI, Market Values, and the Christian College

I’ll begin with a concession: by the standards that tend to govern education today, widespread employment of generative AI tools seems a marvelous idea. As colleges respond to the “enrollment cliff” by embracing market values and selling commodified diplomas to prospective student-consumers, a promise of the ability to leverage generative AI tools to synergize human-bot…
May 5, 2026

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Our Labor on Play

When we think about play, we often think about leisure pursuits. We play tennis or Scrabble. We play the saxophone or video games. We play with words. We play with others. We watch plays. Such pursuits often engage us deeply, even if we only see them as diversions. Educator, author, and toymaker Frank Caplan said…
August 23, 2021
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Guest Post – Changes in the Classics

This post originally appeared in Current.  Princeton University's Classics Department made national headlines this spring for its decision to add an additional track to its BA degree. While curricular reviews and changes rarely attract attention, in this case the new track proved controversial: It allows students to complete a BA in classics without taking any…
August 20, 2021
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What Difference Does Christianity Make in Economics?

An earlier version of this post appeared as part of the editor’s introduction to the Fall 2020 issue of Faith & Economics. In my work as an economist over the last couple of years, but particularly at the last national academic economics conference I attended, I was struck by the wide disagreements that Christians have…
Steven McMullen Headshot
August 19, 2021
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The Rise and Fall of English Literature (and Academic Subjects)

In a recent essay in First Things, Mark Bauerlein offered an account of the last half century (or more) of literary studies that is dazzling (in both its breadth and depth) and devastating (in its accuracy). While the history described in the article, “Truth, Reading, Decadence,” centers on developments in the field of English, the…
August 18, 2021
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Expanding the Christian Boundaries of Environmental Studies: Chicana Novels as Environmental Literature and African American Spirituals as Nature Poetry

One of the problems Christians face in engaging today’s environmental challenges is appreciating the depth and breadth of our heritage. I’ll confess to a gap in my teaching. In the past, when I was assigning supplemental readings for environmental studies courses, I tended to stick to titles, like A Sand County Almanac by Aldo Leopold, that are…
August 17, 2021
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Is Jesus Irrelevant to Our Defense of a Liberal Arts Education?

Liberal arts:  the term designated for the education proper to a free person (Latin liber, “free”) as opposed to a slave. (Merriam-Webster dictionary) “So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” John 8:34-36 Although the concept of a liberal arts education has existed for over fifteen hundred years, the way scholars…
August 16, 2021
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Introducing Students to Interdisciplinary Landscapes: A Case Study in Progress

Established in 1935, the Wheaton College Science Station in the South Dakota Black Hills hosts the longest running off-campus program at the Illinois-based college and represents a pioneering effort for offering summer programs in field science for Christian higher education. Picture how different things were culturally and politically those 86 years ago. The year 1935…
August 13, 2021
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Guest Post – Our Students Are No Joke

“I need 2 more points, so tell me your favorite science/chemistry joke. All answers will earn 2 points.” It has become a tradition of mine to make this the last question of the final test in my freshman nursing chemistry class each fall. I have found that many students enter the course afraid of chemistry,…
August 12, 2021
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The Garden of Extinct Trees

In Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series, the character Lucien keeps a library of “every story that has ever been dreamed … novels their authors never wrote, or never finished, except in dreams.”Gaiman, Neil. "Season of Mists, Vol. 4." The Sandman (1992), p. 40. One shelf, presumably that of British authors, holds The Return of Edwin Drood by Charles…
August 11, 2021