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But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people.” - Luke 2:10 Beneath the dissonant, thrumming symphony of contemporary culture, I think the creeping bass line is fear. I’m not sure if this was true a few years ago, but…

Our impulse to light the night with glowing colors at Christmastime is a good one. This is the time when “the people walking in darkness have seen a great light” (Isaiah 9:1 NIV; see also Mt. 4:16) Colors are good parts of a good creation—signposts to what is true, good, and beautiful. Paul describes Christian…

Emotions are driven by perceptions which are in turn socially derived. Since we’ve established the need for a pedagogy that employs positive emotions, and the theological and scientific basis for pedagogy driven by and for love, it is helpful to note that, biblically, love is always experienced within the context of relationships.

This is Part 2 of a three-part blog. Part 1 explores the Hebraic understanding of the heart to reclaim a vision for the transformational and life-giving education that occurs when educators acknowledge students’ whole selves—intellect and emotions included. Part 2 uses neuroscience to further explore the nature and role of emotions in learning, and Part…

Within the last two to three decades, formal education has significantly increased its emphasis on making learning engaging—albeit as a way to either improve the lecture or move the classroom experience beyond just lecturing. This change in emphasis is evidenced in such approaches as student-centered learning, active learning, and so forth.

I experienced my oddest graduate class discussion in a comparative ethics course at the University of Southern California. The class was taught by a visiting secular, feminist professor who was quite happy to let the discussion run free and wild. This particular class session was held at a conservative Jewish student’s home. In attendance, were…

The other night before bed, my sons and I were watching the Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. It was early in the film and two of the Pevensie children, Peter and Susan, were in Professor Kirke’s study because their sister, Lucy, had just caused a ruckus in the middle of…

Even though the classroom space is necessarily different from a counseling one, it strikes me that given the frequency and the duration of my interactions with students, they are also likely to internalize certain things that I say or do in the classroom; that they “hear” my voice throughout the academic term, and maybe even…

Jamal is a Black student in a predominately White Christian college. During a discussion in class, one of his White classmates, Blake, states, “I don’t see why Black people are so angry about slavery. They’ve gotten so many benefits since then, like affirmative action, welfare, scholarships, and government programs to give them a lift. If…

After my recent transition from my role as an academic librarian to an appointment as a theology professor at my institution, I wrote a post about the parallels between the two positions. To briefly summarize, I argued that the Christian librarian models ways of pursuing the deeper, intellectual questions of life and faith. When engaged…

You’ve heard the story. Advanced technology is created, turns deviant, and coldly proceeds to supplant humanity.  It is one of the more enduring science fiction tropes. From the cautionary imagery of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein to Tom Cruise battling Artificial Intelligence in the latest Mission Impossible blockbuster, the robots going rogue theme consistently occupies our imaginative…

When you find out you are expecting your first baby—before you tell anyone else—the Internet already knows. It also assumes that you will be making space in your home to facilitate the presence of this new life, thus commencing a bombardment of advertisements for all manner of materialistic goods that pretend to assure you: all…

During my academic career researching faith-based higher education in North America and around the world, I have received three types of emails. First, parents often write me with their questions about the confusing array of Christian colleges and universities. They are about to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars, but they realize that unlike buying…

Sometimes students’ reasons for becoming entrepreneurs go beyond the desire for lifestyle freedom. Some young people bristle at the idea of having someone in authority over them. More than autonomy, they want power and immunity from the demands of others, and they imagine being their own boss as equivalent to achieving it. They imagine organizing…

As a multidisciplinary journal, we strive to ensure that all of our pieces would interest a general academic audience. This doesn’t mean they are dummied down in any sense of that phrase. The articles stand on their own as academic pieces. In multiple indexes such as Google Scholar and Researchgate, I can see that our…

In recent days, I have found myself asking these rhetorical questions about my foray into public-facing scholarship. I have learned that whenever I engage in these big-picture, existential questions, I can usually point to some kind of internal conflict or dissonance.

The October 2000 issue of The Atlantic featured a lengthy article by the Boston College sociologist Alan Wolfe on “The Opening of the Evangelical Mind.” Wolfe’s portrayal of evangelicalism’s intellectual contributions came as a word of encouragement to many of us who had heeded the warnings that Mark Noll had issued six years earlier in…