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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…

“So, what do you actually do?” is a very common follow-up question when someone learns that I am a provost. The question occurs frequently enough that I try to find new ways to answer it. For students, I usually quip, “I am a big boss, but not the final boss.” I am thankful to Perry…

“Hypocrites!” Jesus leveled this harsh judgment with a single word, and he was just ramping up. After describing the people’s remarkable ability to predict the weather, he chastised them: “You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky. How is it that you don’t know how to interpret this present time?”Lk.…

In her two-part series, “Disabling Ableism,” Melanie A. Howard encourages Christian educators “to engage in our mission-driven work by rooting out the ableism that separates us from one another and denies us the flourishing for which were created.” We warmly affirm Howard’s intent to raise awareness of the often-latent bias of ableism, to increase access…

In the modern world, youth culture, and especially collegiate culture, is often activist culture. Among the college-aged, a freshness of vision combines with just enough personal skill and knowledge to beget (at least sometimes) a burning sense of responsibility. One phrase associated with collegiate protest culture, and with social activism in general, is “be the…

This past month, my wife and I had a Muslim Kazak family over for dinner. To show hospitality, we did not take down all of our Christian symbols in the house. In addition, we began the dinner as usual, with a prayer in Jesus’s name (I explained that as Christians this practice was our usual…

Author’s note: This piece is based on a speech delivered to graduate students at the annual meeting of the Classical Association of the Middle West and South in 2008, when I could legitimately claim to be midlife. I dedicate it to my daughter, Natalie, who will soon be starting a tenure-track position of her own…

Before I sold out to become a rich and powerful philosophy professor in Dubuque, Iowa, I spent several years working at group homes for people with disabilities both physical and intellectual. My wife, who has even more experience in that field, has at various times in her life been severely disabled, due to her multiple…

I am the elephant in the room. Everywhere I go, people are unintentionally drawn to me. Or rather, people are drawn to a part of me. You see, I was born without my right forearm and hand due to Amniotic Band Syndrome (ABS). I used to wear a prosthetic arm, but due to some physical…

The book of Genesis opens with the creation account describing a beautiful world of sea, earth, sky, plants, fish, birds and other animals. Tucked away in the midst of this story is a curious verse which seems out of place. The verse is Genesis 2:12, which parenthetically mentions that “The gold of that land is…

Just this month, the Social Security Administration announced that Social Security benefits for over 66 million Americans will increase by 3.2 percent in 2024.https://www.ssa.gov/news/press/releases/2023/#10-2023-2. For those who receive benefits, this cost-of-living adjustment will be a welcome step to help them deal with the impact of inflation.https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/12/cpi-september-2023.html. Social Security is perhaps the most successful government program…

Talking about eunuchs in the classroom can be awkward. I can still vividly recall the very first course I ever taught and the student in that course who raised her hand to ask innocently, “This Bible verse says something about eunuchs. What’s a eunuch?” As a brand new teacher, I fumbled my response quite badly…

“Take a look and see if you can see the differences here,” I said offhandedly to a student I was tutoring. As soon as I said it, I felt my face go red with shame. What would have been a perfectly unremarkable statement to any other student felt embarrassingly wrong when directed to the student…

Good, but way too busy. Semester’s a little crazy. When can I apply for sabbatical? So much for work/life balance. Hoping things slow down a little. These are responses from colleagues as we pass in the hall and offer a perfunctory, How are you?  We all seemingly bemoan time moving way too quickly – with…

The past few weeks have taught us that we live in an age of moral and political confusion in academia. Administrators at elite universities do not know whether or how to offer moral clarity and wisdom about current events, such as the intentional targeting and butchering of civilians. Unfortunately, the general practice of public statements…

Some years back, I started an experiment of sorts by sharing a poem each day on Facebook.This post originally appeared in a slightly different form at MoralApologetics.com. Circa 2016, social media was becoming increasingly acrimonious, and I thought such a practice might be one way to shine a small but persistent light and beat back…

In the preface to her recent book on theological education, Elizabeth Conde-Frazier describes some of the repeating patterns that she experienced during her childhood as a member of a Latin@ church in New York.Elizabeth Conde-Frazier, Atando Cabos: Latinx Contributions to Theological Education (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2021). In her church, children were drawn into ministry early…

  We should so behave on Earth that Heaven will not be a shock to us. — Pastor Willard BontragerWillard L. Bontrager was pastor of the Coldsprings Mennonite Church, 1949–1994. See the last paragraph of this blog post for additional information. Expectantly, an avid gardener approached me after my presentation at a conference at the…

I can still remember when I first encountered someone with strong convictions about overpopulation and children. I was a graduate student attending an Evangelicals for Social Action initiative, funded by the Pew Foundation (before it secularized). The wonderful program created by Joel Carpenter paired Christian graduate students with Christian faculty for intellectual mentorship. I am…