Paul L. Caron
Dean
Pepperdine Caruso
School of Law
Faith
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The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness
The Free Press: Why Your ‘Perfect’ Life Feels So Empty, by Arthur Brooks (Harvard) (Author, The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness (2026)): I’ve spent most of my career around some of the most accomplished young people in the world. What I’ve found is that they are undeniably, desperately, incorrigibly
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Steven Pinker & Ross Douthat: The God Debate
The Free Press, Debate: Do We Need God?: Hosting a debate about God in 2026 might seem like a strange thing to do. … For years, intellectuals predicted that as religion receded, society would become calmer, more rational, and more scientific. Shed religious superstition, the theory went, and we would inherit a more enlightened public
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James Talarico, Liberal Protestants, and Evangelicals
Following up on my previous post, Can Texas Senate Candidate James Talarico Reclaim Christianity for the Left? (New York Times): Dispatch Faith: The Real Difference Between Evangelicals and Liberal Protestants, by Daniel K. Williams (Ashland University; Author, Politics of the Cross: A Christian Alternative to Partisanship (2021)): Evangelicals and liberal Protestants badly misunderstand each other.
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NY Times: What Is The Argument For Believing In God?
New York Times Book Review: What Is the Argument for Believing in God?, by Timothy Egan (reviewing Christopher Beha, Why I Am Not an Atheist: The Confessions of a Skeptical Believer (2026)): Christopher Beha’s long and winding road from well-read atheist to even better-read Christian begins with a compelling image: An angel appears to him. Not
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Suffering Is Part Of The Christian Job Description
Christianity Today: Revival Begins with Suffering, Not Celebrity, by Luke Geraty (reviewing Craig Keener (Asbury Theological Seminary), Suffering: Its Meaning for the Spirit-Filled Life (2025)): I remember the first time I heard Craig Keener speak. The world-renowned scholar had recently published Miracles, a two-volume work providing a philosophical, biblical, and experiential case for the supernatural
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Kindness Is Not Optional
Dispatch Faith: Kindness Is Not Optional, by Karen Swallow Prior: The New Testament invokes an apt metaphor when it commands Christians to “clothe” ourselves with kindness. To be clothed in something suggests a quality that is both felt by the wearer and seen by others. Kindness is like this: It resides inside a person but is outwardly visible.
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Finding the Good Life in a World of High Achievers Through My Daughter With Down Syndrome
Dispatch Faith: Finding the Good Life in an Age of Designer Babies and High Achievers, by Amy Julia Becker: When our daughter Penny was born, I was a student at Princeton Seminary. I stumbled through the basic Greek of the New Testament and enjoyed the hours of theological debate over concepts like atonement and salvation
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If There Is No God: The Battle Over Who Defines Good and Evil
The Free Press: Right and Wrong Are Not a Matter of Personal Opinion, by Dennis Prager (Author, If There Is No God: The Battle Over Who Defines Good and Evil (2026)): The great moral tragedy of our time is that feelings have replaced values. And they shouldn’t. Feelings are beautiful. Feelings are wonderful. It’s good
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Pickleball and Faith
Christianity Today: Blessed Are the Pickleball Players, by David Zahl (Author, The Big Relief: The Urgency of Grace for a Worn-Out World (How to Overcome Burnout, Perfectionism, and Life’s Overwhelming Demands by Embracing Grace, Acceptance, and Peace) (2025)): On our way to church every weekend, my family and I pass two sets of tennis courts,
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Disciplining the Dragons Within Us: Spiritual Formation and the Healing of Our Hearts
Christianity Today: The Dragons Within, by Haley Byrd Wilt: In Scripture, dragons—these great beasts we humans can’t help but dream about (or have nightmares about) from time to time—are associated with evil and chaos. And in the works of the original Inklings, J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, dragons remind us of those corners of ourselves
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Western Civilization, Faith, and Great Books
The Dispatch: How to Teach a Great Tradition, by Jessica Hooten Wilson (Pepperdine): Both worshipping and villainizing the West does our students—and our societies—a disservice. On the issue of “Western civilization,” I would like to, in pursuit of fairness and truth, say something that offends everyone. As the American writer Walker Percy once joked, “What
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Ben Sasse: Mortality, Meaning, and the Future of America
Following up on my previous post, Ben Sasse: Death, Hope, and Joy: Public Discourse: On Dying Well: Ben Sasse and the Vocation of Suffering, by Christopher O. Tollefsen (South Carolina; Author, Killing and Christian Ethics (Cambridge University Press 2026)): February is a good month to write, read, and think about death and dying. It is
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AI and Faith
Following up on my previous posts: Russell Moore (Christianity Today), Your Understanding of Calling Is About to Change Radically: You don’t have to seek God’s will for your career anymore. I’m mostly joking, but not entirely. We must always seek God’s will. But what we meant by this for most of our lives is about
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NY Times Op-Ed: Ash Wednesday and the Burden of Living Your Beliefs
New York Times Op-Ed: Ash Wednesday and the Burden of Living Your Beliefs, by Christopher Beha (Author, Why I Am Not an Atheist: The Confessions of a Skeptical Believer (2026)): On Ash Wednesday, I’ll join millions throughout the world in fasting, abstaining from meat and receiving ashes on my forehead, along with the reminder that
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Can Vibe Coding Make Me a Better Catholic?
The Free Press: Can Vibe Coding Make Me a Better Catholic?, by Will Rahn: Our Father, who app in heaven. When I sent my friends Jon and Billy links to a test version of the Catholic mental health app I’ve been working on, they both assumed I’d been hacked. … It all started this past
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Truth, Consequences, and Faith
Dispatch Faith: Truth and Its Consequences, by Alan Noble (Oklahoma Baptist University; Author, To Live Well: Practical Wisdom for Moving Through Chaotic Times (2026)): What are we to do with the fact that Christians, like myself, claim to believe in what pastor-theologian Francis Schaeffer once called “true truth” and yet seem to be no less
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This Winter, Be Bored … And Hear Anew From God
Christianity Today: This Winter, Be Bored, by Hannah Miller King (Associate Rector, The Vine Anglican Church (North Carolina); Author, Feasting on Hope: How God Sets a Table in the Wilderness (2026)): This slow and quiet season is an opportunity to hear anew from God. Parenting literature these days is full of encouragement to let kids be
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Super Bowl Leadership Lessons for Coaches, Players, Deans, and Professors
New York Times, How Mike Vrabel Opted for 4 H’s, Not Just X’s and O’s, to Spur Patriots’ Turnaround: When Mike Vrabel took over with the New England Patriots last spring, what he installed — on both sides of the ball, no less — was complex. The play verbiage was lengthy. There was a lot
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Can AI Help Us Find God?
The Free Press: Can AI Help Us Find God?, by Tyler Cowen (George Mason): Just as artificial intelligence is changing every other part of our lives, so it is changing religion. Spiritual leaders have taken note: Pope Leo XIV has warned of how AI could deaden our emotional lives. The Mormon church, by contrast, has embraced AI as
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God and Country: Upholding Faith, History, and National Identity
Christianity Today, Love Thy Dead-for-200-Years Neighbor, by Daniel K. Williams (Ashland University); Author, The Search for a Rational Faith: Reason and Belief in the History of American Christianity (2026)): In one of his dark epistles, the devil Screwtape tells his nephew Wormwood that Satan has managed to deceive humanity by convincing scholars to adopt the
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Things Worth Remembering: The Poem That Outlived the Holocaust
The Free Press: Things Worth Remembering: The Poem That Outlived the Holocaust, by Douglas Century: As a young woman, [Hannah Senesh] wrote poems inspired by the beauty of her new home [Caesarea, the ancient Roman capital of Judaea—today, a stunning national park in Israel.]. Her most famous poem, written in 1942 when she was 21,
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Slow Down. God’s Grace Doesn’t Require Us to Grind.
Christianity Today, Slow Down. God’s Grace Doesn’t Require Us to Grind., by Alexander Sosler (Montreat College; Author, A Short Guide to Spiritual Formation: Finding Life in Truth, Goodness, Beauty, and Community (2024) (Christianity Today Christian Living Book of the Year (2024)): I’m what some would call a competitive person. I hate losing more than I
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NY Times Faith Podcasts
New York Times, Interesting Times with Ross Douthat: No, Young Men Are Not Returning to Church: All the Religious Trends You’re Wrong About.: In the early 2020s, something unexpected happened: America stopped becoming less religious. The share of Americans with no religious affiliation had been rising for decades. Suddenly, that increase stopped. And all over
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Religious Colleges (And Law Schools) Are Booming. Why?
Chronicle of Higher Education: Religious Colleges Are Booming. Why?, by Clark G. Gilbert (former BYU President; Co-Chair, American Council on Education Commission on Faith-based Colleges and Universities): Young people are adrift, and they want a different kind of education. Today’s young adults live in what the former U.S. surgeon general has called an “epidemic of
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48 Hours in the Life of Paul Clement
48 hours in the life of famed Supreme Court litigator Paul Clement