State of the Site

This term marked the start of MoralApologetics.com. It is a website the vision for which had been in my head for a while, but I am not the most technologically or social media savvy person, to put it mildly, and I was rather riddled with fear about getting the project underway. I didn’t really know the first step about purchasing a domain name or setting up a web page. With reticence and tentativeness, sometime late summer or so, I asked for help from Facebook, and several folks generously volunteered. I availed myself of an offer by former star student Delia Ursulescu, who really got the early ball rolling. I am so very grateful to her for getting us over the first major series of hurdles. And then Jonathan Pruitt, a student in the Ph.D. in theology and apologetics program here at Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary, enthusiastically came onboard with great energy and a head full of innovative ideas on how we can move the site forward. He’s been my Managing Editor ever since, my right hand man, and rumor has it a middle-of-the-night conspirator in a trip to IHOP for a nocturnal podcast. My English professor wife has also helped immensely with editing and has been, as always, a faithful source of support, encouragement, and inspiration. In the three or four months we’ve been up and running, the website has really taken off. We’ve garnered nearly half a thousand Facebook likes, and we’re just starting to attract Twitter followers, a more recent initiative. Gary Habermas wrote a nice blurb for our site, and FB nods have come from no less than public philosopher Tom Morris (formerly from Notre Dame) and apologist extraordinaire William Lane Craig (from Reasonable Faith). We were delighted to see a talented writer and friend, Corey Latta, come onboard early on to write for us, and we’ve been able to assemble a growing team of theologians, philosophers, Old and New Testament Bible scholars, and literary experts to write for us and generate podcasts—from Biola to Houston Baptist to Liberty, from coast to coast and lots of places in between, not to mention from all around the world. Two brilliant New Zealanders who do cutting-edge work in the area of theistic ethics, Matt Flannagan and Glenn Peoples, have been generous enough to share their work, and Angus Ritchie in England promises something soon. We’re currently in the middle of a writing contest along three different dimensions: philosophy, Bible, and literature. My dear friend and undergraduate mentor Elton Higgs has written poems the site has featured. It’s been just great fun.

We want to continue to showcase and highlight the terrific work getting done by a broad array of scholars and thinkers on topics related to the powerful apologetic resource morality provides. The topic is so rich and fertile and multi-faceted it’s going to take contributions from a range of disciplines to do it justice. We’ve only just begun. Potential to build a cumulative, multi-dimensional, multi-disciplinary moral apologetic is great, and the time is right.

Please pray for the site and the impact it can have, and as you feel led, contribute something. Moral arguments are here to stay; in fact, they’re catching on and gaining momentum. They’re deriving strength from top-notch analysis and imaginative work, both fiction and nonfiction. We hope to feature work by the Paul Copans and J. P. Morelands, but the site isn’t just pitched to scholars and Ph.D.’s. We want folks from a broad array of backgrounds and educational experience to catch this shared vision. Some essays or blogs or podcasts are pitched at higher levels than others, but there’s something for everyone. We want the site to be a microcosm of the body of Christ—with lots of members, lots of different moving parts, plenty of diversity, but all of us working together in the same direction, to accomplish together what we couldn’t have accomplished on our own. We want to play a leading role in helping moral apologetics do the work we know it can in bringing attention to the moral features of this world that serve as a signal of transcendence, a powerful piece of evidence for a good and loving God: the locus of value, the Source and Goal of our best moral impulses, the one who invested this world with its sacramental significance; who promises to be with us through every trial, forgive us every sin as we turn to Him in faith and repentance, and who has the resources to wipe away every tear, redeem every suffering, and put this world aright.

Blessed Advent Season to you all!

Dave Baggett

Photo: "waterplace condo tower" by J. Nickerson. CC License.