Here's me talking to the kids at Faith Ascent this summer.

I Want My Children to be Free

In the days of the old republic, we talked of what it meant to be free.  We knew what slavery really looked like: a slave must not be allowed to read, must not be allowed to think, must not be allowed to reflect.  He must not rule any aspec...

(At a recent retreat, I wrote a paraphrased version of Psalm 139 as a form of contemplation. This painting is by Hilary Sylvester at Baruch designs.) 

“How precious to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast are the sum of them!”

Dear Lord,

You’re paying such close attentio...

I recently took a group of students to a conference at Georgetown University, and we tacked on a day to electrically scoot ourselves all over Washington D.C.  Don't get me wrong: I was thrilled to see the Air and Space Museum, and for my students to steep themselves in...

This talk was presented to faculty who gathered at a recent Urbana conference in St. Louis.

Hello, my name is Rachel, and I am a recovering sinner.  (Hi, Rachel).  George Stulac and John Inazu asked me to talk to you today about spiritual formation, and since I’m 100% c...

In May of 2018, the H.F. Langenberg Memorial Speaker Series brought Robert Frank and Charles Murray to campus in an event called “Culture and Opportunity in America”.  Frank discussed themes from his book Success and Luck, which deals with the social strains caused by...

Joshua Mitchell’s “The Identity Politics Death Grip” helped me to understand my strange relationship, as a classical liberal, with the social justice movement.  I am animated on issues of economic freedom and criminal justice reform, but feel deeply ambivalent about th...

Note: I presented this talk to a group of honors students last week, at a conference called "Has Liberalism Failed?"

I. Livingston’s Idiosyncratic reading of Hume 

In the ancient and medieval philosophical world, questions about what is real and what is valuable take pri...

Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), escaped slave, abolitionist, and public intellectual, could be excused for doubting our Constitution; after all, it did in fact require the return of runaway slaves. Upon reflection, however, Douglass changed his mind, insisting that the...

My parents were Goldwater conservatives, Reagan Republicans.  They were also in ministry to hippies (many of them Jewish!) and blacks in the 1970’s – “sold out for Jesus” as we used to say back then – and deeply disappointed at the mainline churches for the way their t...