Dear Friends,
It’s finally here! For the last year, the IFL team has been working tirelessly to prepare for the Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture, and we couldn’t be more excited! We received a record number of paper proposals and registrants from across the country and look forward to gathering together to explore the most pressing and relevant questions about AI, the human person, and the use of technology. We can’t wait to hear from our plenary speakers: Elaine Howard Eckland, Andy Crouch, and Rosalind Picard. The Symposium will also have a record number of featured speakers exploring the significance of AI in areas from healthcare to journalism to business to theology. And, of course, we can’t wait to hear the incredibly diverse and fascinating paper panels.
Along with the amazing speakers, we have some other innovations we can’t wait to share with you. First, Truett Seminary will be the host for many of our papers. Second, we will welcome Lee Camp, who will be taping a live interview with Rosalind Picard of his nationally syndicated podcast No Small Endeavor for our final plenary. Third, look for extra programming for students – providing more opportunities for connections and to learn about Baylor. Finally, we'll use a conference app, Guidebook, to save on paper programs and keep participants updated about the schedule and other key information. We'll be sharing the link to Guidebook on Wednesday, February 4.
It’s not too late to register! Can’t wait to see you all there!
In Christ,
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Baylor Symposium on Faith and Culture 2026
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| Dr. Stephanie Boddie Guest Column
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We are looking forward to using Guidebook for our conference app. Guidebook will be available on Wednesday, February 4th, and will contain the most up-to-date schedule, conference maps, as well as other key information. While we're finalizing Guidebook, you can view the draft schedule on our website.
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My journey into theology and sustainability did not begin in classrooms or formal doctrine. It grew from what scholars like Nancy Ammerman and Meredith McGuire call lived religion—faith formed through everyday practices, relationships, and embodied experience. More than a decade of undiagnosed illness led me to deepen my connection with God through creation: eating from the lush garden of my health coach and walking for hours in prayer. These became spaces of theological discovery. In the garden, I found a refugium—a place where life persisted, healed, and renewed itself amid vulnerability. There, I glimpsed the promise of Isaiah 58:11: God guides us continually, satisfying our needs even in scorched places, and makes us like a watered garden whose streams never fail.
I first shared these insights with children in a church garden, using the Parable of the Sower (Luke 8:4-15) to connect soil, care, and spiritual formation. This work grew into co-leading Bible Center’s Oasis Farm and Fishery, and later collaborating with Baylor colleagues, City of Waco staff, and community partners on the Sustainable Community and Regenerative Agriculture Project (S.C.R.A.P.), a community-based intervention and research initiative. Over time, I came to see congregational gardens and food projects as places of refugia, in the sense articulated by Debra Rienstra—spaces of shelter and renewal amid crisis. Here, faith takes shape where spiritual formation, ecological care, and social repair converge, and where kinship with creation is practiced rather than assumed.
Participation in the Common Home Fellowship represents a theological hope: that shared life, inquiry, and practice can form us more deeply for faithful engagement with God’s renewal. I anticipate gaining sustained opportunities for reflection with colleagues, deepening my understanding of how theology and sustainability intersect across disciplines, and bringing renewed insight, energy, and collaborative vision back to my course Education from a Gardener’s Perspective, for the benefit of both students and community partners. I envision this fellowship as a faithful refugium: a space where hope, humility, and kinship with creation are nurtured, and where together we are formed to participate in God’s ongoing work of restoration and flourishing. Through the life of this fellowship, I see Baylor strengthening its mission as a Christian university supporting faculty to advance interdisciplinary research and to equip students who live out faith through service, learning, and care for God’s creation.
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IFL was thrilled to help organize a mini-Symposium bringing together 15 leading STEM faculty from across campus to discuss the integration of faith into STEM teaching and research. Thanks especially to Ian Gravagne for taking the lead in organization and the Lilly Network of Church-Related Colleges and Universities for providing grant funding for the event. We learned a lot from these faithful and thoughtful Baylor faculty and look forward to developing more STEM-focused programming based on their great suggestions.
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Book Launch: Stretched: A Study for Lent and the Entire Christian Life by Dr. Christopher Richmann |
Biblical Translation and Church Tradition: Where Does Authority Lie, and Why? with Rev. Dr. Brian Dunkle |
Join Truett Seminary and IFL for an Ash Wednesday lecture by The Rev. Dr. Brian Dunkle, SJ, Associate Professor of Historical Theology at Boston College, on the crucial question of "Biblical Translation and Church Tradition: Where Does Authority Lie, and Why?"
🗓 February 18, 2026
⏰ 5:15 - 6:30 pm
Dinner will be provided. RSVP to ifl@baylor.edu.
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Barth, Church, and State: Questions and Challenges for Politics Today |
The BUFICOP (BU Faculty Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Patristics) will be a bit unorthodox! That is, they will be reading three apocryphal gospels together. Gatherings will be on February 3, March 3, and April 2.
Contact David Wilhite for more details.
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2026 Teaching Fellowships |
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Faith and Learning Around Baylor Campus |
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Faith and Learning Beyond Baylor |
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Gifts to our Excellence Fund fuel opportunities for faculty and staff growth and development.
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Are you hosting an event or working on a project related to faith and learning? We'd love to hear about it! Click the link below, share your information, and we'll follow up with you directly.
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Institute for Faith and Learning
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Waco, Texas 76798
(254) 710-4805
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