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Baylor University
Institute for Faith and Learning
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      • Dr. Bill Sterrett, Hale Endowed Chair of School Leadership
      • Dr. Holly Oxhandler, Professor, Associate Dean for Research, Diana R. Garland School of Social Work
      • Dr. Larry Lyon, Vice Provost, Dean of the Graduate School
      • Dr. Min Y. Pack, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering
      • Dr. Tom Hibbs, J. Newton Rayzor Sr. Professor of Philosophy and Dean Emeritus
    • Connect with us
  • Conferences and Symposiums
    • Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture
      • 2026 Technology and the Human Person in the Age of AI
      • 2024 Renewing and Reimagining Institutions for the Common Good
      • 2023 Called Together in an Age of Discord
      • 2022 Art Seeking Understanding
      • 2021 Living Accountably
      • 2019 The Character of the University
      • 2018 Stewardship of Creation
      • 2017 The Bible and the Reformation
      • 2016 Higher Learning
      • 2015 The Spirit of Sports
      • 2014 Faith and Film
      • 2013 Kierkegaard: A Christian Thinker for Our Time?
      • 2012 Technology and Human Flourishing
      • 2011 Educating for Wisdom in the 21st Century University
      • 2010 Human Dignity and the Future of Health Care
      • 2009 Secularization and Revival
      • 2008 Bottom-Up Approaches to Global Poverty
      • 2007 Friendship
    • Bill and Roberta Bailey Family Lecture in Christian Ethics
      • Bailey Lecture Video Archive
    • Other Conferences and Events
      • IFL@25
      • 2019 LFP National Conference
      • Art & Soul
      • Pruit Memorial Symposium
      • Baylor University Medical Ethics Seminar
      • One-Time Conferences
    • Baylor Symposium on Nicaea: Creed, Culture, and Christendom
  • Programs
    • Communio: A Retreat for Baylor Educators
    • Crane Scholars Program
      • Application Requirements
      • Program Activities
      • Program Leaders
      • Media
    • Missio
    • Forming Character in the Classroom
      • About the Program: Called to Character
      • Past Workshops
    • Reading Groups and Guest Speakers
    • Soundings Project
    • Conyers Scholars
    • Vocare
  • Events
  • Media and Resources
    • Faith Animating Online Education
      • Starting Points
      • A Christian Imagination about Online Education?
      • Cultivating Character and Online Learning
      • Additional Resources
    • Institute for Faith and Learning Video Archive
    • Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture Video Archive
    • Bill and Roberta Bailey Family Lecture in Christian Ethics
    • Recommended Reading
    • External Resources
    • The Christian Reflection Project
      • Acedia
      • Advent Ethics
      • Aging
      • Anger
      • Apocalyptic Vision
      • Attentive Patience
      • The Book of Acts
      • Caring for Creation
      • Catechism
      • Chastity
      • Children
      • Christianity and Islam
      • Christmas and Epiphany
      • Cities and Towns
      • Cloning
      • Consumerism
      • Death
      • Disability
      • Easter
      • Food and Hunger
      • Forgiveness
      • Freedom
      • Friendship
      • Gambling Culture
      • Generosity
      • Global Wealth
      • Health
      • Heaven and Hell
      • Hospitality
      • Immigration
      • Inklings of Glory
      • Lent
      • The Letter of James
      • Marriage
      • Membership
      • Monasticism Old and New
      • Moral Landscape of Creation
      • Mysticism
      • Parables
      • Patterns of Violence
      • Peace and War
      • Pentecost
      • Pornographic Culture
      • Prayer
      • Prison
      • Prophetic Ethics
      • Racism
      • Sabbath
      • Schools in a Pluralist Culture
      • Scripture
      • Sermon on the Mount
      • Singing Our Lives
      • Sports
      • Suffering
      • Traveling Well
      • Virtual Lives
      • Vocation
      • Where Wisdom Is Found
      • Women and the Church
      • Women in the Bible
      • Work
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Baylor BU Institute for Faith and Learning Programs Reading Groups and Guest Speakers
  • Communio: A Retreat for Baylor Educators
  • Crane Scholars Program
  • Missio
  • Forming Character in the Classroom
  • Reading Groups and Guest Speakers
  • Soundings Project
  • Conyers Scholars
  • Vocare

Reading Groups and Guest Speakers

Reading Groups

The Institute for Faith and Learning sponsors occasional reading groups for faculty for timely or timeless books on topics related to the intersection of faith and learning. These discussions sometimes culminate in a lecture by the author on campus.

A sampling of past groups have been organized around the following books.

  • Robert Benne, Quality with Soul: How Six Premier Christian Colleges and Universities Keep Faith With Their Religious Traditions (Eerdmans, 2001)
  • A. J. Conyers, The Listening Heart: Vocation and the Crisis of Modern Culture (Spence, 2006)
  • Steven R. Harmon, Towards Baptist Catholicity: Essays on Tradition and the Baptist Vision (Paternoster, 2006)
  • David Bentley Hart, The Beauty of the Infinite: The Aesthetics of Christian Truth (Eerdmans, 2003)
  • Richard Hughes, How Christian Faith Can Sustain the Life of the Mind (Eerdmans, 2001)
  • James Davison Hunter, To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World (Oxford, 2010)
  • John Paul II, Fides et Ratio (1998)
  • Emmanuel Katongole and Chris Rice, Reconciling All Things: A Christian Vision for Justice, Peace and Healing (IVP Books, 2008)
  • Elizabeth Newman, Untamed Hospitality: Welcoming God and Other Strangers (Brazos Press, 2007)
  • John Henry Newman, The Idea of a University (1858)
  • David I. Smith and James K. A. Smith, Teaching and Christian Practices: Reshaping Faith and Learning (Eerdmans, 2011)
  • James K. A. Smith, Desiring the Kingdom: Worship, Worldview, and Cultural Formation (Baker Academic, 2009)
  • Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Belknap, 2007)
  • Nicholas Wolterstorff, Educating for Shalom: Essays on Christian Higher Education (Eerdmans, 2004)

 

Guest Speakers

From time to time, the Institute for Faith and Learning hosts or co-sponsors with other departments lectures by visiting guests as well as members of Baylor's own faculty.

Past lectures:

James Davison Hunter
University of Virginia
“Good Kids: Thinking Anew about the Moral Formation of Children”
April 5, 2018

Thomas S. Hibbs
Baylor University
“Skills, Virtues, and the Christian University: Liberal Learning in an Illiberal Time”
April 19, 2017

L. Gregory Jones
Duke Divinity School
“It's Not (Only) About You”
April 21, 2016

Candace Vogler
University of Chicago
“Christian Moral Courage”
April 23, 2015

Paul Wadell
St. Norbert College
“Friendship with God: Embodying Charity as a Way of Life”
April 24, 2014

Graham McAleer
Loyola University, Maryland
“Jay-Z vs. Lorde: The Whig-Tory Dispute in Business Ethics or Hume and Smith versus Aquinas and Kant”
March 24, 2014
“Pope Francis and the Problem of Hope”
March 25, 2014

Francis Spufford
Reading and discussion of Unapologetic: Why Despite Everything Christianity Can Still Make Surprising Emotional Sense
November 4, 2013

Robert McClelland
“Parkland Hospital, November 1963”
October 24, 2013

David Smith
Professor of German and Director, Kuyers Institute for Christian Teaching and Learning, Calvin College
“Teaching as a Christian Practice”
February 21, 2013

Charles Taylor & James Davison Hunter
“An Afternoon Conversation with Charles Taylor and James Davison Hunter on Politics, Faith, and the Future”
November 27, 2012

James Davison Hunter
Labrosse-Levinson Distinguished Professor of Religion, Culture, and Social Theory at the University of Virginia and Executive Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture
“Christianity, Politics, and Power”
September 22, 2011

Fr. Uwe Michael Lang
Coordinator of the Master's program in “Architecture, Sacred Art and Liturgy,” Università Europea di Roma/Ateneo Pontificio Regina Apostolorum and staff member of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, Vatican
“Heart Speaks to Heart: John Henry Newman as a Reader of the Church Fathers”
January 25, 2011

Denis Alexander
Director, Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, St Edmunds College, Cambridge
“The Dawkins Delusion: Debunking the Conflict between Science and Religion”
October 21, 2010

James K. A. Smith
Associate professor of philosophy and adjunct professor of congregational and ministry studies at Calvin College
“From the Classroom to the Dorm Room and Back Again: Formation Across the University”
April 23, 2010

Br. Guy J. Consolmagno, S.J.
Astronomer and Curator of Meteorites at the Vatican Observatory
“The Virtuous Astronomer: How the Work of Science Is Shaped by the Virtues of Faith, Hope, and Love”
March 2, 2010

Conor Cunningham
Lecturer, Theology and Religious Studies, University of Nottingham
“A Screening and Discussion of the BBC Documentary Did Darwin Kill God? with the Film's Writer and Presenter”
November 4, 2009

Elizabeth Newman
Professor of Theology and Ethics, Baptist Theological Seminary at Richmond
“Hospitality and Higher Education: An Invitation to a Way of Life”
March 17, 2009

Robert Benne
Director, Center for Religion and Society
Roanoke College
“A Lutheran Vision of Baptist Christian Higher Education”
November 8, 2007

John Wilson
Editor, Books & Culture
“The Political Captivity of the Church?”
September 4, 2007

Tjerk de Reus
Dutch journalist & cultural critic
“Why Was the Great Grandson of Vincent Van Gogh Killed? Christian Responses to Islamist Violence in the Netherlands”
Sponsored by the Baylor University Department of Religion, Center for Jewish Studies, and the Institute for Faith and Learning
October 25, 2006

Norbert Kroó
Vice President
Hungarian Academy of Sciences
“God, the Creator and Heavenly Father”
Hosted by the Department of Physics and Co-sponsored by the Institute for Faith and Learning
January 11, 2006

David C. Schindler
Assistant Professor of Philosophy
Department of Humanities and Augustinian Traditions
Villanova University
“Free Thinking or Freedom for Thinking? An Untimely Meditation on the Nature of Academic Freedom”
November 3, 2005

Eugene McCarraher
Assistant Professor of Humanities
Department of Humanities and Augustinian Tradition
Villanova University
“Consider the Lillies: Why the Protestant Work Ethic Is So Awful”
October 27, 2005
“The Enchantments of Mammon: Corporate Capitalism and the American Moral Imagination”
Hosted by the Institute for Faith and Learning and co-sponsored by the Honors College
October 28, 2005

Simon Oliver
Senior Lecturer in Theology
University of Wales, Lampeter
Inaugural Traditio Lecture: “Aquinas and Newton on Trinity and Motion”
April 1, 2005

Ellen Charry
Associate Professor of Systematic and Historical Theology
Princeton Theological Seminary
“Can We Know God?”
February 24, 2005

Naomi Schaefer Riley
Journalist
“God on the Quad: How Religious Colleges and the Missionary Generation are Changing America”
February 10, 2005

Jorge L. A. Garcia
Professor of Philosophy
Boston College
“Race in Christian Higher Education”
March 29, 2004

Terry Mattingly
Associate Professor of Mass Media and Religion
Palm Beach Atlantic University
“The Passion and the Press: Inside a Media Storm”
March 9, 2004

David Livingstone
Professor of Geography and Intellectual History
The Queen's University of Belfast
“The Idea of a University: Irish Interventions”
February 12, 2004

Mark Osler
Associate Professor of Law
Baylor University
“Justice, Mercy and a Humbling Walk: The Christian Challenge to the Vocation of Law”
November 13, 2003

Edward Blum
Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of Sociology
Baylor University
“The Soul of W. E. B. Du Bois: Critically Integrating Faith, Learning, and Social Justice”
October 3, 2003

David Bebbington
Visiting Distinguished Professor of History
Baylor University
“The International Legacy of Jonathan Edwards”
September 24, 2003

Robert Benne
Jordan-Trexler Professor of Religion & Director, Center for Religion and Society
Roanoke College
“The Most Contentious Claims of Quality with Soul: How Six Premier Christian Colleges and Universities Keep Faith With Their Religious Traditions”
April 24, 2003
“Vocation as Another Proof for the Existence of God”
April 24, 2003
“Christian Engagement with Higher Education: The Vocation of a Christian Scholar”
April 25, 2003

Byron R. Johnson
Director, Center for Research on Religion & Urban Civil Society
University of Pennsylvania
“Overview of the Relationship Between Spirituality and Social Issues”
April 16, 2003
“The Opportunities and Obstacles in Conducting Faith-Based Research: Being Wise as a Serpent and Gentle as a Dove”
April 16, 2003

Richard Hughes
Distinguished Professor of Religion and Director, Center for Faith and Learning
Pepperdine University
“How Christian Faith Can Sustain the Life of the Mind: The Power of Christian Traditions”
February 13, 2003
“What Might It Mean to Teach from a Christian Perspective?”
February 14, 2003

Ralph Wood
University Professor of Theology and Literature
“On Keeping Our Scholarship Free: How to Avoid Becoming Either Conservatives or Liberals”
November 20, 2002

C. Stephen Evans
University Professor of Philosophy and Humanities
“Must Christian Scholarship Be Overtly Christian?”
October 9, 2002

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  • About
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    • Staff
    • Campus Impact
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      • Dr. Bill Sterrett, Hale Endowed Chair of School Leadership
      • Dr. Holly Oxhandler, Professor, Associate Dean for Research, Diana R. Garland School of Social Work
        Back
        • Faith and Learning at Baylor
      • Dr. Larry Lyon, Vice Provost, Dean of the Graduate School
      • Dr. Min Y. Pack, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering
      • Dr. Tom Hibbs, J. Newton Rayzor Sr. Professor of Philosophy and Dean Emeritus
    • Connect with us
  • Conferences and Symposiums
    Back
    • Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture
      Back
      • 2026 Technology and the Human Person in the Age of AI
        Back
        • Call for Proposals
        • Invited Speakers
      • 2024 Renewing and Reimagining Institutions for the Common Good
        Back
        • Conference Schedule
        • Invited Speakers
        • Photos and Video
        • Conference Volume
      • 2023 Called Together in an Age of Discord
        Back
        • Travel Information
        • Conference Schedule
        • Featured Speakers
      • 2022 Art Seeking Understanding
        Back
        • Conference Schedule
        • Plenary and Featured Speakers
      • 2021 Living Accountably
        Back
        • Plenary and Featured Speakers
        • Video Archive
      • 2019 The Character of the University
        Back
        • Plenary and Featured Speakers
        • Video Archive
      • 2018 Stewardship of Creation
        Back
        • Featured Speakers
        • Video Archive
      • 2017 The Bible and the Reformation
        Back
        • Co-Sponsors
        • Featured Speakers and Panels
        • Video Archive
      • 2016 Higher Learning
        Back
        • Featured Speakers and Panels
        • Video Archive
      • 2015 The Spirit of Sports
        Back
        • Featured Speakers
        • Video Archive
      • 2014 Faith and Film
        Back
        • Video Archive
      • 2013 Kierkegaard: A Christian Thinker for Our Time?
        Back
        • Featured Speakers
        • Video Archive
      • 2012 Technology and Human Flourishing
        Back
        • Featured Speakers
        • Video Archive
      • 2011 Educating for Wisdom in the 21st Century University
        Back
        • Featured Speakers
        • Video Archive
      • 2010 Human Dignity and the Future of Health Care
        Back
        • Featured Speakers
        • Video Archive
      • 2009 Secularization and Revival
        Back
        • Video Archive
      • 2008 Bottom-Up Approaches to Global Poverty
      • 2007 Friendship
    • Bill and Roberta Bailey Family Lecture in Christian Ethics
      Back
      • Bailey Lecture Video Archive
    • Other Conferences and Events
      Back
      • IFL@25
        Back
        • Select Pictures from IFL@25
      • 2019 LFP National Conference
        Back
        • Presenters
      • Art & Soul
      • Pruit Memorial Symposium
        Back
        • 2001 Celebrating Augustine's Confessions
        • 2002 Christianity and Economics
        • 2003 The Schooled Heart
        • 2004 Slavery, Oppression, and Prejudice
        • 2005 Global Christianity
      • Baylor University Medical Ethics Seminar
        Back
        • 2016 Medical Ethics Seminar
        • 2017 Medical Ethics Seminar
        • 2018 Medical Ethics Seminar
      • One-Time Conferences
    • Baylor Symposium on Nicaea: Creed, Culture, and Christendom
  • Programs
    Back
    • Communio: A Retreat for Baylor Educators
    • Crane Scholars Program
      Back
      • Application Requirements
      • Program Activities
      • Program Leaders
      • Media
    • Missio
    • Forming Character in the Classroom
      Back
      • About the Program: Called to Character
      • Past Workshops
    • Reading Groups and Guest Speakers
    • Soundings Project
    • Conyers Scholars
    • Vocare
  • Events
  • Media and Resources
    Back
    • Faith Animating Online Education
      Back
      • Starting Points
      • A Christian Imagination about Online Education?
      • Cultivating Character and Online Learning
      • Additional Resources
    • Institute for Faith and Learning Video Archive
    • Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture Video Archive
    • Bill and Roberta Bailey Family Lecture in Christian Ethics
    • Recommended Reading
    • External Resources
    • The Christian Reflection Project
      Back
      • Acedia
      • Advent Ethics
      • Aging
      • Anger
      • Apocalyptic Vision
      • Attentive Patience
      • The Book of Acts
      • Caring for Creation
      • Catechism
      • Chastity
      • Children
      • Christianity and Islam
      • Christmas and Epiphany
      • Cities and Towns
      • Cloning
      • Consumerism
      • Death
      • Disability
      • Easter
      • Food and Hunger
      • Forgiveness
      • Freedom
      • Friendship
      • Gambling Culture
      • Generosity
      • Global Wealth
      • Health
      • Heaven and Hell
      • Hospitality
      • Immigration
      • Inklings of Glory
      • Lent
      • The Letter of James
      • Marriage
      • Membership
      • Monasticism Old and New
      • Moral Landscape of Creation
      • Mysticism
      • Parables
      • Patterns of Violence
      • Peace and War
      • Pentecost
      • Pornographic Culture
      • Prayer
      • Prison
      • Prophetic Ethics
      • Racism
      • Sabbath
      • Schools in a Pluralist Culture
      • Scripture
      • Sermon on the Mount
      • Singing Our Lives
      • Sports
      • Suffering
      • Traveling Well
      • Virtual Lives
      • Vocation
      • Where Wisdom Is Found
      • Women and the Church
      • Women in the Bible
      • Work
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