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One of the exercises that I often have both classroom students and survey respondents do is to prioritize their identities. I first ask them to consider the range of identities they might apply to themselves, and then I ask them to rank their top three. I find the answers produce significant clarity about my audience,…

I think human beings are built to want to impress someone. To please someone. To get approval. It’s there, palpably, in everyone’s eyes, if you know how to look. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with this - nothing at all. It’s built into the tripartite structure of the Trinity, wherein Father and Son gaze upon each…

Part-way through teaching a new course on faith and pedagogy last year I noticed an emerging pattern that had not been a fully conscious part of my plan. An unanticipated trend slowly turned into a conscious strategy that threaded its way through several major topics. It started a few weeks into the semester as we…

Part guidance to young lawyers and law students and part Christian apologetic for the legal profession, Robert F. Cochran, Jr.’s new book, The Servant Lawyer, is a much-needed addition to the dialogue between the church, the legal profession, and the communities they both serve. The overall tone of the text is prescriptive. Cochran argues that…

Throughout our scholarly careers, we have consistently been struck by an empirical finding we often encounter. The most important religious variable predictor in studies is usually not how people identify (e.g., Christian) or what they believe (e.g., certain views of the Bible). Instead, it is simply a weekly action. How often do they go to…

For my own part, I know I must keep alive in myself what I have once known and grown into. —Thomas MertonThomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander (New York: Doubleday, Image, 1968), 187.  My wide-ranging but low-built apartment complex, constructed before I was born, values its old maples and oaks, though time has reduced…

Why does the Bible exist? Whereas many introductory textbooks explore the “Four W’s” of inquiry (who, what, when, and where), Jacob L. Wright seeks to answer why a tiny nation over the course of several centuries produced a prolific and enduring corpus of texts. Setting aside answers one might expect from a confessional setting (“because…

When we receive a manuscript that looks promising for publication, I often ask its authors to keep two things in mind as they work on revisions. First, I ask them to make it clear why people should care about their topic, reminding them that most of their readers will likely be outside their field. However,…

In How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen (2023), David Brooks calls us to re-think how much true influence we can have on others if we do not take the time to genuinely know them and hear their perspectives. In a time of distrust and uncertainty across…

In 2018, a group of us at Baylor helped start the Baylor Faith and Character Study (see here for more). We did so for a variety of reasons. First, we wanted to know the faith and character of our incoming students. As any good missiology or pedagogy course will teach you, you have to know…

“Without stories there is nothing. Stories are the world’s memory. The past is erased without stories.” ― Chaim Potok, Old Men At Midnight One Sunday after church, my daughter and our very hip lead pastor began talking about Harry Potter. With the names “Tonks and Lupin,” the differences in education, experience, gender, age, fashion, and…

It is the time of year when those of us who serve as teachers, from college to Kindergarten, are ramping up our preparation for the upcoming term. In my home university, new faculty are arriving on campus this week for onboarding, next week will be devoted to faculty meetings at the university and college level,…

One of the first questions I ask students in my Christian Legal Thought seminar is what they expect Christianity might have to say about law. A common answer is that Christian teaching can provide guidance about what the legal rules should be.  Many of my students have been taught the importance of having a Christian…

A few years back, one of my literature classes read Misha Nogha’s “Chippoke Na Gomi,”Misha Nogha, “Chippoke Na Gomi,” The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction (Middleton, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2010), 630-636. an intriguing and provocative science fiction story exploring the repercussions of atomic weaponry and the responsibilities we have to one another.This article first…

Every Christian university requires at least one English composition, writing, and/or literature class. Thus, one would think that someone reviewing those course descriptions would find considerable evidence demonstrating how Christianity relates to these basic courses. You would be wrong. We recently analyzed the required gen ed course descriptions at all Protestant and Catholic universities that…

The Hyperia roller coast is the UK’s largest and most intense, at 72 m (236 feet) in height, with three loops and a speed of more than 80 miles per hour. After several false starts (due to safety concerns and technological difficulties), it finally opened to the public on June 22, just in time for…

“We live in days of ferment, agitation, and transition.” This is the opening line from a 1967 statement on academic freedom written by Carlton Gregory, a longtime professor of philosophy at Barrington College, a Christian college once located near Rhode Island’s capital. It closed its doors due to financial troubles in 1985, the year I…

The overwhelming ambition and pride of Faustus in Christopher Marlowe’s Doctor FaustusChristopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus (B-Text, 1616), ed. David Scott Kastan, Norton Critical Editions (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2005), 54-122. is frequently highlighted as one of the work's central themes, and rightfully so. However, our students might connect equally, if not more, with…

The last year was big for me as an academic: I received tenure, published a book, and was awarded a sabbatical. Yet my colleagues and students tend not to ask me about these landmarks. They instead know me as a gardener, thanks to the pictures I post to social media. Truth be told, I find…

One of my courses in seminary—a half-century ago!—had a lasting impact on my thinking. It was about world religions, and especially helpful for me was an assigned text, Christian Faith and Other Faiths, by Stephen Neill,Stephen Neill, Christian Faith and Other Faiths: The Christian Dialogue with Other Religions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961). then a…