15 Years Later
This month marks the 15th anniversary of the publication of “The Manhattan Declaration: A Call of Christian Conscience.” Three lions of social conservatism drafted the document: the late Charles Colson, Timothy George, and Robert George. Almost 150 leaders from various Protestant, Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox traditions were charter signers of the declaration. Eventually, more than […]
Cultivating Thoughtful Reading In An Age of Distraction
Like many educators, I’ve been thinking about Rose Horowitch’s recent essay in The Atlantic titled “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books.” This provocative piece has been making the rounds on social media and blogs dedicated to higher education. Horowitch interviews faculty members in several prestigious institutions about their students’ reading habits. The results […]
Lessons About Loss, Living, And Loving Together
I live in Tigerville, S.C., which is a rural crossroads of about 2,100 residents nestled in the southern foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. It is home to North Greenville University, where I work as a professor. Tigerville is part of the Greenville metropolitan area, which includes around 568,000 people. But like so many of the […]
Running the Race Before Us
Understandably, our attention is focused increasingly on the presidential race and other political contests this fall. Many believers will be discouraged by at least some elements of those races. So, especially in a year when we just held the Summer Olympics, it’s perhaps helpful to be reminded of some races that we ought to find […]
Just Say No
As a child of the 1980s and 1990s, I was admonished regularly to avoid the use of drugs. First Lady Nancy Reagan championed the “Just Say No” campaign, lending it national credibility. Drug use couldn’t be depicted positively in cartoons or comic books, and warning labels were put on albums that glorified drug use. Afterschool […]
Brad Wilcox, Marriage, and Human Flourishing
In 1998, messengers to the Southern Baptist Convention amended the Baptist Faith and Message to include a new article on The Family. The new article carried over into the fully revised Baptist Faith and Message (2000), which remains the Convention’s confessional consensus. The article is worth quoting in full: God has ordained the family as […]
A Just And Wise Decision
When most people think of intercollegiate athletics, they think of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), which includes approximately 1,100 schools across three divisions. However, there are hundreds of other schools that do not compete in the NCAA. This includes the 250 colleges and universities that are part of the National Association for Intercollegiate Athletics […]
The Soft Tyranny of Safe Spaces
In recent years, a growing number of colleges and universities have advocated the importance of providing “safe spaces” for students. This concern isn’t primarily related to students’ physical safety, though academic institutions take the physical safety of their students with great seriousness. Rather, safe spaces are primarily concerned with so-called emotional safety. It seems that […]
Christian higher education in the negative world
I was eager to read Aaron Renn’s highly anticipated new book, Life in the Negative World: Confronting Challenges in an Anti-Christian Culture. The book is an expansion of his much-discussed 2022 essay for First Things titled “The Three Worlds of Evangelicalism.” Renn’s argues that American culture has been secularizing at an increasing rate since the 1960s. He breaks […]
Navigating Critical Theories Faithfully
A decade ago, few people had ever heard terms like critical race theory, queer theory, intersectionality, social justice, gender fluidity, hegemonic power, whiteness, DEI, or heteronormativity. The exceptions were those who had undertaken graduate studies in law, education, or the social sciences. That is certainly no longer the case. These days, it seems that everybody […]