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In 2017, a group of about forty Christian communication scholars convened at Spring Arbor University to participate in a dialogical mini-conference on “Civility and Virtue in a Multicultural Public Sphere.” A year and a half into the presidency of Donald Trump, our conversations kept turning to the plague of incivility in our national discourse and…

“So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: ‘Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship….” (Acts 17:22-23) Across my newsfeeds recently has come news of an “Exceptional trove of 24 ancient statues found immersed in…

I double-checked the title; was “witness” singular or plural? With the answer—singular—the book’s thesis became crystal clear. Amy-Jill Levine invites each reader to be a witness, a witness to arguably one of the most monumental events in history, the death of Jesus of Nazareth. She lays bare each ancient witness’s actions and testimony, and encourages…

Developing a solid biblical foundation on the issue of multicultural ministry is essential if we are to have any meaningful discussion on how best to respond to undocumented workers. If God desires to bring to Himself a multiethnic community that will best reflect His glory, then we should be doing everything we can until then…

To faithfully respond to a specific issue (like undocumented workers in America), we need to take a step back and see a bigger picture of God’s work as revealed in God’s Word. While the issue of undocumented workers touches on several topics (political, legal, economic, etc.), at its heart, talking about undocumented workers is about…

As my dad handed the immigration officer our passports, I watched as the agent flipped quickly through each one of them. First my dad, then my brother, then mine. But when he got to my mom’s passport, he stopped and asked how long she had been an ‘alien’ in this country. My head quickly turned…

When I was a teenager, I purchased an early personal computer called a Timex Sinclair ZX-81 with money I earned from my paper route. I was amazed at how computer programs enabled me to build “castles in the air . . . creating by exertion of the imagination.”Frederick P. Brooks, The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on…

We are in the middle of a run in the publication of “new histories.” In the five months after The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity was published, eight other books with “New History” in the subtitle were published in my library’s database, on topics from the evolution of mammals to Watergate. Hundreds…

It is a healthy thing for Christian scholars to have some favorite heretics. I have a small group of them that I confer with occasionally. Most of them are long gone, so I have to communicate with them by going back to their writings. Some folks may think that the very idea of having favorite…

Ever since Arthur Holmes published The Idea of a Christian College, scholars with a stake in Christian higher education have reflected on the relationship between faith and learning. With entire works devoted to scholarship, teaching, and student affairs at Christian colleges and universities, it is perplexing that the athletics department at these institutions has not…

You ever leave a conversation and then wanted to kick yourself because you did not say something you wanted to say? I think we all have done that. Well, I can do one better than that. I have written a book titled Beyond Racial Division. The book is published, and yet the other day, while riding…

In the previous post, I compared the arguments of overwhelmed NYU students to those of their organic chemistry professor. NYU professor Stephanie Lee’s tweet sums it up: “I could write compelling defenses for each party - students, Prof. Jones, my department, NYU admin - bc everyone is operating under different pressures.”Stephanie Lee, Twitter post, October…

You might have heard that organic chemistry professor Maitland Jones Jr. is no longer teaching at NYU. The news went global when Jones had his one-year contract taken away, not because of a crime or scandal, but because of a student petition against the way he taught his course. This news surprised me. I had…

Beloved, let us be loving one another. Because the love is from God! And everyone loving has been born from God, and knows God. 1 John 4:7 DLNT After writing a post for my blog on the importance of savoring the season of Christmas for worshipping our Savior, I realized the need to do the…

The North American church is losing younger members. College is a critical time for forming or rejecting faith, but religious disenchantment grows already during middle and high school. As college educators, we inherit the results. Some of our students are reluctant to discuss faith-related topics. Others quietly protest to themselves about Christian education. I have…

The utility of providing mentors to early career professionals is widely recognized. Many businesses encourage them with established formal mentoring programs. Many universities do the same, assigning incoming faculty and staff to more experienced counterparts to assist in their onboarding. The exact relationship between the “mentor” and “mentee,” however, comes in a wide variety of…

What are the disciple-making options for churches, schools, and others committed to facilitating the spiritual growth process? Part 1 of this series offered five methods from throughout church history. Here in Part 2, I share four more historical methods, followed by a suggestion for integrating these time-honored approaches into a comprehensive discipleship model that is…

Followers of Jesus are to be leaders in disciple-making. At home, at work, in school, in church, anywhere really, it is nothing less than what the scriptures invite us to do with our lives: Be disciples and make disciples. In fact, the word μαθητής (mathetes) appears more than 250 times in the New Testament, meaning…

Following the wide public release of the GPT-3 language generator, the internet has been awash in panic and awe—but mostly panic. Headlines like “The College Essay is Dead” (Atlantic) and “Will Chat GPT rot our brains?” (RNS) tell the story of our academic anxiety in the face of this challenge. Others have offered more sanguine…

This December, in her Language Arts class, my fifth grader is retelling the Christmas story. And she can’t just write any old, kid-style paraphrase. Instead, my daughter’s story has to be from the vantage of a minor, or even invisible, character. What, my daughter must consider, did the Nativity look like to the overlooked? Well,…