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“Suffering doesn’t automatically or naturally lead to growth or good outcomes. It must be handled properly.” - Tim KellerTim Keller, Walking With God Through Pain and Suffering, (Dutton, NY: Riverhead Books,  2015). “Our fruitfulness comes out of our vulnerability and not just out of our power. It comes out of our powerlessness.” - Henri NouwenHenri…

My institution “has a proud tradition of faculty governance,” as a colleague once euphemistically summarized the heavy committee load professors carry here. Both descriptions are true. It is a proud tradition and a heavy load. Most full-time faculty here serve on at least two campus-wide committees. Then in addition to these are departmental committees, search…

My academic inspiration this summer came from an unlikely source: Apple TV’s Ted Lasso. I know, curveball, right? But I can explain. Two years ago, my husband David and I had just settled into our new home in Houston. We were both assuming new positions at a new school and, like everyone else, navigating the…

The stock market looks at the world through a peculiar lens, one that people outside the market don’t always understand. Oddly enough, it is similar to the lens through which the Bible views the world, particularly how it views Christians and the church. The church has come under consistent criticism, sometimes well earned, and yet…

On June 29, 2021, a camera at Citi Field, home of the New York Mets, captured video footage of Jacob deGrom playfully engaging a teammate in a wrestling match in the outfield as other players stretched and prepared for that night’s game. After several seconds deGrom successfully pinned his opponent as a third teammate slid…

While browsing through some past Faith Animating Learning blog articles, I came across a helpful piece by Louis Markos on “Teaching in a Post-COVID world.” Part of the piece offers cautions regarding the effects of social media consumption on teaching: Although the algorithms are generally driven by a consumerist agenda that privileges advertising over politics,…

From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This…

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from Hank Reichman and Karen Swallow Prior’s dialogue originally printed in the Academe Blog (an AAUP publication).  We have reprinted a portion of it with permission.  HR: In my Understanding Academic Freedom (p. 102-03), I discussed a professor’s refusal to write a letter of reference for a student seeking to study…

Editor’s Note: The following is an excerpt from Hank Reichman and Karen Swallow Prior’s dialogue originally printed in the Academe Blog (an AAUP publication). We have reprinted a portion of it with permission.  Hank Reichman: Thank you for doing this, Karen. As I mentioned when we spoke, I am interested in your experiences in academia…

Seven years ago, I took a teaching sabbatical in Burundi. When I set foot on U.S. soil again, I had the exact opposite of a sense of accomplishment. This ambivalence would continue. In fact, I’m still processing it now. Just this month, a faculty workshop reminded me of this when slides warned of the inevitable…

In my life, there’s a lot of beating up going on. Personally, there’s the matter of my illness. As a recent survivor of stage 3B cancer, I get batteries of scans and blood tests every few months. Sometimes the numbers are alarming, and they feel like a punch to the gut. My whole self –…

“For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.” -Colossians 1:16 One of the laboratory procedures we teach to first-year general chemistry students involves measuring the wavelengths of the visible emission…

Having taken part in numerous Christian faculty or staff development conversations, I notice one key issue in these conversations: Christian educators have often absorbed a liberal democratic way of thinking about hospitality. As a result, they open themselves and their institutions to secularization since they practice the liberal democratic virtue of hospitality instead of the…

The COVID years have been tough ones for educators. I am in my thirty-second year as an English professor at Houston Baptist University (HBU), and, though I have weathered many economic, political, and pedagogical storms, I can’t remember having lived through such an intense and extended period of anxiety and uncertainty. In addition to the…

Imagine being able to teleport anywhere, change your appearance, ride a dragon, or build your own fantasy home. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook (now named “Meta”), recently announced the creation of “the metaverse,” an immersive virtual world in which you can do all these things. The term “metaverse” was coined in a 1990s novel titled…

“ has been one of those places where we have told ourselves who we are.”Frederick Rudolph, Curriculum, A History of the American Undergraduate Course of Study since 1636 (San Francisco: Jossey Bass, 1977), 1. —Frederick Rudolph One of the odd things about most forms of general education is how they fail to prepare students for…

Today I showed my students how to do laundry. More precisely, I texted them tips on using the laundry room at our hotel during our South Korea study abroad program, as the instructions in the coin laundry room were mostly written in Korean. Readers of this blog might recall my previous blog piece longing to…

“Exvangelicalism” is a relatively new term for a much older phenomenon: those who’ve been raised as evangelicals coming to realize that they no longer identify as such, and intentionally reckoning with the continuing impact of that tradition in their lives. Philosophers have not had much to say about this phenomenon – until now.  The Evangelical Philosophical Society sponsored the panel “Exvangelicalism and Evangelical Philosophy”…

Editor's Note: Due to the recent social media conversation about forgiving student debt, we thought it would be timely to reprint this earlier CSR blog post about this topic.  Thanks--PLG  “Just do it.” That was not the mantra of Nike being repeated in a recent Inside Higher Education article; it was the advice of a…

“…ou will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” – Acts 1:8 In 1997, Roy Seals, a long-time friend of mine who was then serving as the South American director at a Baptist missionary organization, invited me to accompany him to the Venezuelan rain…