Today we welcome Paul Gutacker (M.A. and Th.M. Regent College; Ph.D. Baylor University) to the Anxious Bench. Paul’s research focuses on religion and historical memory, particularly nineteenth-century American Protestants’ memory of the Christian past. In addition to teaching at Baylor, Paul and his wife Paige direct Brazos Fellows, a post-college fellowship centered on theological study,…
It was during a major academic conference. A male colleague alerted me that a female graduate student had left the reception early. A fellow conference attendee had cornered her and began making sexually inappropriate advances—both physical and verbal. Luckily one of her male friends realized what was happening and intervened so that she could escape….
Recently, Karen Swallow Prior spoke out against the “Billy Graham rule”–married men distancing themselves from women to avoid temptation and the appearance of evil. For those of you who missed Prior’s article, she eloquently argued that good moral character is better than rigid behavioral rules. As she writes, “Virtue ethics relies on moral character that…