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In Western culture, and especially in America, patience is rarely considered a virtue. Increasingly, we celebrate impetuosity. The punchline of a recent New Balance commercial, for example, is “impatience is a virtue.” This tactic is ostensibly deployed for marketing purposes—mere hyperbole meant to highlight that company’s corporate social responsibility initiatives (i.e., when it comes to…

In his essential study on the role of prophetic religion in the death of Jim Crow, David L. Chappell writes, “White supremacists in the South failed to get their churches to give their cause active support.”David L. Chappell, A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow (Chapel Hill: University of North…

Take up the cause of the fatherless.Isaiah 1:17 America currently has the largest percentage of children raised without two parents in the world (23% compared to 7% for the rest of the world). We also have the highest-ever number of children living without fathers in America (same web source). Our children and society will experience the…

I earned my master’s degree as a single mother while working full time. It was as intense as it sounds. Once or twice a week for about two years, I’d leave work and immediately drive an hour east to my night classes at the closest state university. Afterward, I’d get home around 10:00, stay up…

The middle of a pandemic is usually not a good time to publish a book, especially when social and travel restrictions interfere with the traditional methods of publicizing and marketing a new book. However, the claims of conscience by Christians in this pandemic make the publication of Christianity and the Laws of Conscience: An Introduction…

Currently, there is some discussion at Baylor University about considering “empathy” as an ideal character strength for undergraduate students. That discussion made me wonder why we talk about empathy as a virtue in Christian circles. After all, it is not a biblical word (of course that does not mean it is not a Christian virtue).…

While there are many books written about the use of technology from a faith perspective, very few are written for those who are actually designing and creating technology – the engineers and designers. Several years ago I got together with two other veteran engineers and Christian college professors to set about writing a book that…

In the past few years, the symphony of women’s voices and the stories emanating from their own, often tragic, experiences in both the sacred and secular world have only grown louder, demanding that the church and society pay attention to women’s grievances and to their cries for equality and justice. By noting both the contributions…

Sometimes it is interesting to take stock of the field of Christian higher education.  A research team I lead recently put together a spreadsheet of all the Protestant institutions in America that require students to take at least one course that addresses the Christian tradition (and not simply religion generally). There are 249 such Protestant…

Be  shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not pursuing dishonest gain, but eager to serve; not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock. – 1 Peter 5:2-3 (NIV) We often think…

Policymakers (and therefore, citizens) in modern democracies confront a knot of intertwining problems, from climate change to nuclear proliferation to terrorism. Many of the threads have formed a rope called human migration, as drought, political instability or corruption, and neocolonial economic policies by the major powers interlace to drive seventy million (and counting) refugees from…

As most any study of general education will tell you, students do not find general education engaging. As this study from the Harvard General Education Review Committee found, “Students report not taking their Gen Ed courses as seriously as other courses.” Yet, “Students wish more Gen Ed courses were worth taking seriously.” I think the problem is…

A recent article by James Wood recounts his evolution from a fanboy of Tim Keller to a critic. His argument sparked a flurry of responses, both positive and negative.To offer just a few: David French, “A Critique of Tim Keller Reveals the Moral Devolution of the New Christian Right,” https://frenchpress.thedispatch.com/p/a-critique-of-tim-keller-reveals; Rod Dreher, “Tim Keller &…

Gregory Smith’s recent blogs concerning the need for graduate programs in library science based on a Christian worldview are well written and thoughtfully presented both in his rationale and his outlining the advantages and the challenges. Smith has championed this philosophy for many years. As the library profession becomes increasingly more secular, liberal, and woke,…

In my work as a pre-med advisor, I help students navigate the pictures and words medical schools use to recruit students. Each school has a website and promotional materials making their case that they’re a good fit for YOU, the reader. One paradox of the Internet Age though is that the more information is available,…

As Friday’s post mentioned, virtue education is not effectively accomplished in a liberal arts classroom education. It requires what the foremost expert on excellence, Anders Ericsson, called deliberate practice. One of the keys Ericsson found to deliberate practice in a particular endeavor is to improve one’s mental representations. He defines a mental representations as “a…

Between 1928 and 1930, Hugh Hartshorne and Mark May published a series of famous studies about character that would set back the study of virtue for over a half-century. Based on their studies Hartshorne and May concluded there was no such thing as stable character traits in people.Hugh Hartshorne, Mark May, and Julius B. Maller,…

Do buildings push your buttons? How does it feel to walk down a city street and feel gleaming glass rising on either side? What about towers of stone, casting long, dark shadows? How does it feel to see spires of commerce (think New York’s Chrysler building) rising like space-age cathedrals against a vast, blue sky?…

My father was a university chaplain in a nation under military rule.  I was a child during this time and had no idea what he, my mother, and others experienced.  Years later, we spoke about these years. He recalled that on that university campus it was common knowledge that most classrooms and spaces had someone…

It belongs to the examined life to strive for excellence in the discipline of memory. The honest and diligent activity of remembering helps us in several ways. It can be action-guiding or forward-looking. Through remembering a past experience, we are able to make a prudent call about what to do here and now—not repeating a…