In yesterday’s post, I shared my journey through finding my way in faith and learning up through graduate school. As perhaps for many of us, I then wrestled through this crisis of faith for the next two years at the University of Chicago and then Northwestern. I found a sympathetic mentor for my PhD program,…
I recently took up an appointment at Samford University as Professor of Early American History after stepping down as Dean of Howard College of Arts and Sciences. I took great joy in serving in that role for seven years after coming to the university in July 2016 from my previous appointment as Associate Dean in…
For anyone familiar with the scholarship on vocation, Frederick Buechner’s ubiquitous definition that “the place God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet” is hard to miss. Those of us engaged in the teaching of vocation have often implicitly or explicitly favored the “deep gladness” angle, encouraging…
For anyone familiar with the scholarship on vocation, Frederick Buechner’s ubiquitous definition that “the place God calls you is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet” is hard to miss. Those of us engaged in the teaching of vocation have often implicitly or explicitly favored the “deep gladness” angle, encouraging…
Scholars at Christian institutions have inherited from the broader academy an archival definition of knowledge that tends to obscure relationships between academic scholarship and broader human enterprises. This essay builds upon and extends the work of Ernest Boyer and others who have advocated for a stronger link between scholarship and human communities. It argues that…
If I could tell my college-aged self to read just one book, it would be The Lonely Man of Faith by Joseph B. Soloveitchik. I’ve read it three times since I discovered it in 2012, and I wish I’d found it earlier. When I was an undergraduate at the University of Florida, I wouldn’t have…
Let me begin by warmly thanking Amy Black, Matthew Kaemingk, and Paul Weithman for their generous and challenging comments on my essay, “Fidelity in Politics.” I have found it both enjoyable and instructive to reflect on what they say. In my response to their comments, I will begin with comments on some intellectual issues that…
Nicholas Wolterstorff’s Paul Henry Lecture offers a succinct overview of neo-Calvinist political thought. That body of thought is rooted in the work of the late 19th- and early 20th-century thinker and politician Abraham Kuyper. It is therefore roughly coeval with the body of social teaching promulgated by the magisterium of the Catholic Church and is,…
Integratio Press recently published Professing Christ: Christian Tradition and Faith-Learning Integration in Public Universities. Edited by Jonathan Pettigrew and Robert H. Woods Jr., this book includes contributions from 18 current or former faculty at public universities, including a past president of the National Communication Association and one of the world’s leading scholars on ethics in…
“Everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die,” opens John S. Feinberg in Four Views on Heaven (23). Trying to circumvent, downplay, or ignore our mortality, as well as demurring to talk candidly about death, has bedeviled humanity from time immemorial, satirized by the likes of Monty Python’s classic “Parrot Sketch” and…
Let the message of Christ dwell among you richly as you teach and admonish one another with all wisdom through psalms, hymns, and songs from the Spirit, singing to God with gratitude in your hearts. Col. 3:16 For Christians, most virtue words do not describe virtues unless they are directed properly. To put one’s faith,…
On June 29, 2021, a camera at Citi Field, home of the New York Mets, captured video footage of Jacob deGrom playfully engaging a teammate in a wrestling match in the outfield as other players stretched and prepared for that night’s game. After several seconds deGrom successfully pinned his opponent as a third teammate slid…
“…[Y]ou will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” – Acts 1:8 In 1997, Roy Seals, a long-time friend of mine who was then serving as the South American director at a Baptist missionary organization, invited me to accompany him to the Venezuelan rain…
I made many mistakes in my oral qualifying exam, halfway through grad school. The first was probably that I wore a double-breasted blazer at least 5 years out of style, as a committee member noted at the beginning. More substantial was the fact that I stumbled over explaining my collaborator’s techniques to the committee, one…
Giant kelp. It’s a species of algae that can grow over 50 meters tall, making it the largest marine algae. It’s also one of the fastest growing living things on our planet. On its own, giant kelp is an impressive part of God’s creation. However, I’d argue that the true beauty of this species also…
2 Corinthians 2:14-16 ESV But thanks be to God, who in Christ Jesus, always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from…
There is a long tradition in the West that Intellectuals are (happily) ignorant of the “Dismal Science.” Christians, in addition, feel that they are called to avoid wealth, to repair the effects of its accumulation on the lower strata of the population and to help the successful ones to use “economics” with distant care. And,…
Alan Roxburgh begins the “Forward” to this text with an interesting and concise message regarding why and for whom the book was written and the intended story of the book. While Roxburgh suggests that the book is intended to be a guide for leaders, it appears as though the book may be aimed at pastors…
“What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” (Tertullian, the 3rd century B.C.E.) is really the basic question addressed by this new book, which is part of the Liturgical Studies Series of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship. Calvin Stapert’s small book undertakes an enormous task, sketching a brief history of documents that refer to…
My prolific bookseller friend has insisted that Beyond Homelessness is one of the most important books of 2008. I find it hard to disagree. Steven Bouma-Prediger and Brian J. Walsh assert that “Christian faith is a faith that is always placed. Placed in a good creation. Placed in time. An incarnational faith” (xii). Antithetical to…
