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"Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ." Galatians 6:2-3 is the foundation I use to introduce my research to students related to empathy. To me, the verse exemplifies empathy. Empathy is often defined as the ability to understand another’s emotions and experiences. What is often missing from this affective…

Three recent events at three Christian colleges within 200 miles of one another offer a glimpse into the muddled reality of higher education. A midwestern Christian college announced it was closing at the end of the current school year. A neighboring school announced the completion of a quarter-billion-dollar campaign only two years after making significant…

Once upon a time there was a Christian University (CU) with a wonderful mission to educate men and women for leadership and service by integrating excellence in academics and living out Christian commitment within a caring community. It was a beautiful vision and one that this university faithfully sought to exhibit to the world for…

Jessica Martin, known to everyone as Jess, was a graduate student at Baylor and our student worker for the Christian Scholar’s Review website. Over the past several years, Jess and I exchanged hundreds of emails as she transferred the articles from the print issue onto the site. She was also often the final editor of…

Scrolling Ourselves to Death is a project of the Gospel Coalition, harnessing the arguments of Neil Postman’s 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death, to take on post-millennial media. This compilation of essays applies Postman’s logic and insights about the social and spiritual impact of television to the 2025 world of social media and other digital…

Artificial intelligence (AI) is making its way into nearly every sphere of human life. This is certainly true of higher education, for good and ill, and Christian colleges and universities are no exception. My own alma mater, Olivet Nazarene University, in addition to grappling with some of the most pressing AI-related ethical considerations around student…

Over the past two weeks, my colleagues Margaret Diddams and Perry Glanzer have articulated the mission of Christian Scholar’s Review by considering the “why” and “what” of the journal. In this blog post, I will explore the “how” question—how CSR approaches its mission. (As you might expect, the “how” overlaps considerably with the “what” and…

I want to know how God created this world. I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know God's thoughts, the rest are details. –Albert Einstein1 The turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century was a heady time for advances in atomic…

The conversation began, as it often does, with conviction. In my undergraduate criminal justice classroom, we were discussing the death penalty. One student spoke with certainty about justice as retribution—grounded, she explained, in her understanding of Scripture. Across the room, another student responded just as firmly, articulating a vision of justice rooted in restoration, also…

Finding one’s calling is a rich, complex journey. Honesty “about the ups and downs of calling will open up conversation” that fosters contemplating more meaningful and purposeful lives (16). That is one of the primary aims of Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore’s recent book. Utilizing faith, philosophy, and pragmatism, she pushes back on the pop culture notion of…

As an educational psychologist, I study teachers and students, both of whom are learners in their own ways. As artificial intelligence (AI) burgeons in classrooms, I cannot help but think of Romans as a possible answer to the question Benjamin Bloom posed more than four decades ago. Roughly, Bloom’s question was: “How can we deliver…

Last week, Margaret Diddams discussed the important mission that guides Christian Scholar’s Review (CSR)—the “why.” As someone who studies Christian higher education, I also find that faithful institutions have theologically rich and informed mission statements. Unfortunately, many Christian institutions with great mission statements do not consistently demonstrate the operationalization of that mission in all they…

In the first post, I shared a story about Mike Mulligan that shaped me. In this one, I want to share the story that shaped my current approach to engineering education. It’s the story of how the t-shaped engineer came to be, and how a quiet theological correction helped me see its deeper truth. The…

In the last post, we explored the power of story as a tool for formation. But formation doesn't happen in a vacuum — it happens inside a cultural moment. And right now, that moment is being reshaped by forces that go far deeper than artificial intelligence alone. AI is just the tip of the iceberg.…

The rise of artificial intelligence is not primarily a technical disruption. It is a formational one. The tools are reshaping us — our attention, our relationships, our sense of what it means to learn and work and belong. That conviction sits at the center of this series, reshaping the way I think about engineering education,…

The popular futuristic fantasy of a world without work has been receiving increased attention lately. In a January 2026 podcast, Elon Musk opined that people should no longer worry about saving for retirement because, in the world of abundance to come, those savings would be irrelevant.1 By 2030, he claimed, artificial intelligence would be smarter…

Almost every company in America can point to a corporate plan that highlights its unique strengths, market segments, growth opportunities, and headwinds. Many Christian not-for-profits, and especially Christian higher education institutions, can also point to their own strategic plans that focus on their mission, key areas for growth, and the steps they will take to…

They claim to be eyewitnesses to eternity, spectators to the supernatural. “I’ve seen Heaven” is their audacious claim. “I met God there.” “I’m no longer afraid to die because I know there’s life after death, and it’s more real than real life!” One even described the experience like this: “If you took the one-thousand best…

In graduate school, one of my professors required our class to read a "classic" social psychology text, When Prophecy Fails. The book is based on the account of Dorothy Martin, who in 1954 predicted a world-ending flood that would result in her group’s rescue by flying saucers. But that’s not the interesting part. The interesting…

From Ivan the Terrible, to Suleiman the Magnificent, to Logan Roy on HBO’s “Succession,” are powerful fathers doomed to crush their children? And are “paternal” leaders (like “Papa Joe,” Joseph Stalin) all too likely to sacrifice and exploit the people they’re supposed to protect?  In my Art History classes, one image that reliably provokes discussion…