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Inflation is the Enemy of Justice

At a recent lunch with some of my colleagues, our discussion turned to the topic of the inflation that has developed in the US economy over the past year.  I am sixty-one years old while my lunch companions were in their 40’s and 30’s.  I was surprised to see their lack of knowledge and concern…
February 3, 2022
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Guest Post – Evolutionary theodicies, humility, and hope

My path as a Christian paleontologist has been a journey. I wouldn’t necessarily say that it has been marked by peril, especially since I’ve never lost my faith, but it has certainly involved many stumbling blocks along the way. During my years as an undergraduate student at what is now Calvin University, I became increasingly…
January 31, 2022
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Guest Post – Learning from a Black Evangelical’s Challenge to America’s Social Justice Movement

In Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe, Pastor and Cultural Apologist Voddie Baucham takes up what he believes to be the most important discussion for the contemporary church:  social justice.Voddie Baucham, Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe (Salem Books, 2021) In late June 2021, shortly after the…
January 27, 2022
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Technology and the Opening Chapters of Genesis

In the opening chapter of Genesis, God speaks the words “Let there be,” producing a dazzling variety of creatures, each “according to their kind.” At first glance, the creation story seems to speak only of the natural world—of skies and seas, fish and birds, stars, and planets. What might technology have to do with the…
January 26, 2022
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Truth and Healing in the Church After Sex Abuse

After two decades of intensive revelations, the wounds from priestly sex abuse in the Catholic Church in the United States remain vastly unhealed. Most enduringly, thousands of survivors of abuse remain wounded spiritually, psychologically, emotionally, and relationally. The ripple effects have wounded their families and communities on an exponential scale and have weakened trust among…
January 25, 2022
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Guest Post – Grading: What’s Love Got to do With It?

In her recent CSR blog post (November 18, 2021), Marybeth Baggett invited professors to reconsider their grading practices through the lens of spiritual disciplines, guided by Richard Foster’s influential book, Celebration of Discipline. Baggett’s essay argued that grading student work, while a necessary part of teachers’ “mundane” work, can be rejuvenated when understood as an…
January 24, 2022
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Ahmaud Arbery and the (Im)possibility of Justice

In his book Specters of Marx, French philosopher Jacques Derrida observes that time is always “out of joint.” Citing Shakespeare’s Hamlet, he notes that Hamlet’s tragedy arises from his mission to right a wrong that can never present itself, a crime that is always in the past. The disjunction of crime and correction is ever present in the…
January 21, 2022
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HOW TO TEACH OLD PROFESSORS NEW PEDAGOGICAL TRICKS

In May of 2021, I finished my thirtieth year as an English professor and scholar in residence at Houston Baptist University. Over the years, I have marked my growth as a professor by the continual research, publishing, and speaking I have done in my areas of specialization. I have marked it as well by my…
January 19, 2022
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Hourglass: For the New Year

As we celebrate the New Year, we commemorate the passage of the old. In the mass media, this comes in the form of top ten lists and “in memoriam” montages. In folk imagery, it is symbolized by Father Time with his sickle. (He even appears in Rudolph’s Shiny New Year.) Though often comical in recent…
January 18, 2022
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Lessons from the Pandemic: Situating Human Flourishing

Devastating as the pandemic has been, it has created space for reflection on important questions. Much of what we considered “normal” before no longer seems viable. As some argue, wealth, social and racial inequality, oppressive work conditions, among other issues not only remain, but have become exacerbated as a result of the on-going pandemic. A…
January 14, 2022
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“Friending” the Dead (Part 2): Friendship with the Living

Author’s note: In yesterday’s post, I argued that one of the purposes of scholarship is friendship with the dead. Today, I reflect on how our relationship with the dead can both enrich and be enriched by friendship with the living. . . . We sometimes think of scholarship as something occurring in a vacuum. The…
January 13, 2022
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“Friending” the Dead (Part 1)

Author’s note: This two-part post is based on a talk first delivered to Baylor University’s Crane Scholars (2010), a cohort of Christian undergraduates considering careers in academia, and then to undergraduates in Baylor’s Honors Residential College (2015). . . . About the weird title—I had better confess right now that I am not a Facebook…
January 12, 2022
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Review of Public Intellectuals and the Common Good: Christian Thinking for Human Flourishing

“America needs more private intellectuals.”Francis Joseph Beckwith, Twitter post, June 22, 2021, 10:36 a.m., https://twitter.com/fbeckwith/status/1407346836223021065. Emphasis added. So tweeted Baylor University philosopher and occasional public intellectual Francis Beckwith. Perhaps Beckwith had in mind a particular public intellectual’s unfortunate essay or social media misadventure. There is little doubt public intellectuals draw fire from all sides. Scholars…
January 11, 2022
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Gender and Character Education: The Case of Self-Control

Like a city whose walls are broken through is a person who lacks self-control.Prov. 25:28 (NIV) That self-control is a fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:23) required of both men and women is not debated in Christian circles (see also 2 Peter 1:6). Titus 2 specifically emphasizes the need to teach self-control to older men (v.…
January 10, 2022
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Learning Embodied Wisdom from Majority World Women

“Now, every day as soon as I wake up, I am instantly aware that I am female.  I never used to think about this.”  - From a student completing a six-month internship in India Learning to navigate involves a whole lot of relating and locating: relating a map to the actual landscape we are traversing,…