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It’s an odd thing to reflect on the meaning of academics gathering for lunch when you’re an academic on sabbatical. I relish so much about these occasional sabbaths from teaching: the time to rest and recharge, the opportunity to enjoy our twins’ first months in high school, the chances to travel and do research. Still,…

In a commencement address to La Salle University, Peter J. Dougherty culled the most precious piece of wisdom from his 53 years of professional expertise to impart to graduating students. Just four words: meet often for lunch. In fact, let’s make it Lunch, a long, slow, enjoyable time at a sit-down restaurant. Getting together with…

Editor’s Note: This past year we enjoyed reading Peter J. Dougherty’s essay “In Praise of Lunch.”  The essay inspired CSR’s Publisher, Todd Ream, to organize a series of responses to his article.  Thus, today’s post reprints the essay with his permission. Then, over the next three days, we will post three responses from different faculty.…

I remember the dissonance I felt when I was invited to join a prayer meeting organized by Wheaton’s Politics and International Relations Department soon after the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. Masked and socially distanced, we gathered in a calm setting to pray for the people of Ukraine—huddled in basements and subways…

Liturgies and daily prayers have long been part of Christian practice. The Psalms and the Lord’s Prayer are two prominent examples from the Bible, but church history also tells of the development of prayer books, books of hours, and the Book of Common Prayer. These aids helped the faithful meditate on scripture and Christian principles…

John Gottman became famous as a psychologist and scholar due to his ability to predict divorces in 90% of cases. He claims one particular vice is an important predictor of divorce.John M. Gottman, What Predicts Divorce? (Erlbaum, 1994). See also this updated version with a different publisher: What Predicts Divorce? The Relationship between Marital Processes…

Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on Thomas Kidd's substack. The ‘critical book review’ is a staple of course assignments in colleges and seminaries. But I find that some students simply do not know what it means to write a ‘critical’ book review. Some students seem to think that ‘critical’ just means summarizing the book…

While Colorado is known for having 50 mountains that exceed 14,000 feet, my home state of Washington boasts its own mountainous claims, with nearly 100 reaching mile-high peaks. Yet one among them stands out. At 14,409 feet and 60 miles southeast of Seattle, Mt. Rainier is simply known as “the mountain.” In a city that…

Some months ago, I rode to the airport with Uber, as I have done many times before and since. I noticed before the car arrived that the driver had high ratings for “excellent conversation.” Sure enough, it was not long before he started raising topics for discussion. He was driving for Uber on his day…

Our two boys were three and six years old when my wife contracted Guillain Barré. Fortunately, the doctors were able to stop its deadly progression caused by her immune system going crazy and demyelinating her nerves before it reached her vital organs. She spent the next year in bed on a roller coaster of "recovery"…

“…you are shockingly fit.” These are the words from a young man who happened to be in the weight room at the same time I was in the fall semester of 2021. Of course, this was a semester in which COVID containment measures were plentiful. Student times were separated from faculty and staff times in…

“He was only nine years old, he was a child; but he knew his own soul, it was dear to him, he protected it as the eyelid protects the eye, and did not let anyone into his soul without the key of love.” – Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina As a mom and a Christian college…

In my family, like many Korean American families, we regularly communicate using Konglish (Korean + English). We rely on Konglish when something complicated or multilayered can be better expressed using a combination of Korean and English words. The other day, during an evening walk with my spouse, I said the following about two students who…

Now that Donald Trump has become president, one of his signature initiatives is a proposal to form a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). According to Trump, DOGE will “pave the way for my administration to dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure federal agencies.”https://www.govexec.com/management/2024/11/trump-vows-dismantle-federal-bureaucracy-and-restructure-agencies-new-musk-led-commission/400998/. This new entity will be led by…

This essay is adapted from The Spirit of the Game: American Christianity and Big-Time Sports (Oxford University Press). In its American form, muscular Christianity sought to counter the supposed feminization of the Protestant church by presenting a more masculine image fit for a “strenuous” age of American expansion. Athletics became an important part of the…

"Tryna make ends meet, you’re a slave to money then you die”Bitter Sweet Symphony, The Verve I remember seeing an empirical finding as an undergraduate student in the late 1980s and often thereafter. The finding came from the First Year Survey given annually by the Higher Education Research Institution at UCLA. They gave first-year students…

It is a season of change in the American higher education world. The technological tsunami of online education has broken across the university beachfront and the economic efficiency for students being able to earn a degree without leaving home, and often at reduced tuition, has produced a massive increase in online programs. At the same…

Montana is part of “Big Sky Country.” During a sabbatical last semester (thank you, Calvin University!), my wife and I spent time under the big sky and worked on writing projects. Unobstructed views and dramatic land features yield a sense of perspective that the sky’s not just big, it’s enormous. In parts of Montana, plains…

This past summer a terrible forest fire raced through Jasper National Park in Alberta, scorching wide swaths of the park and destroying a third of the town of Jasper; but even before the long winter set in, signs of new life were beginning to sprout. In a generation or two, the forests will have returned…

In this post-election period, there is a desire among many people to come together across political differences to restore civility and cooperation within workplaces, families, or even marriages. One of the major barriers to doing this is the belief that “I am right; they are biased,” which is referred to as the bias blind spot.…