Vinedressers,

Last month, Christina Bieber Lake – who led two magnificent faculty retreats for us in Asbury and LA – launched a new Substack, “Art & Soul.” We’ve already shared some work from it, but we neglected to share the essay with which she launched it, on the power of beauty to change our lives.

You really should give it a read! That’s why it’s our lead item in this week’s Grapevine.

And speaking of faculty retreats . . .

How do we find a path forward in these challenging times? AI is rewriting the script, online is still a tough hill to climb, and schools are often slow to change. But in the new environment that’s emerging, there will be all the more desire for education that forms the heart and transforms the whole person.

A schedule for our faculty retreat on Aug. 4-6 is posted below!

You can still join us; you can even still get a room at the Asbury Inn for a very reasonable rate. See below for booking instructions.

Last year the retreat was completely full and we had a wait list, so don’t delay!

We’ll be resting and reconnecting at Asbury Theological Seminary. But we’ll also be exploring how we as educators can take the opportunity of the “AI/Online Education Apocalypse” to refocus on what matters most. Students have a deep yearning to be seen and heard, and to be shaped in Christlikeness for mission in the world. The algorithmization of everything makes what we have to offer them more valuable than it ever was.

We’ve also lined up two amazing “field trip” experiences. After gathering at Asbury in gorgeous Wilmore, Ky., we’ll get a private tour at Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill and encounter this unique historic community, which flourished when it was able to connect daily work to faith and mission, but faced challenges when it lost the ability to make this connection. Then we’ll visit Old World Timber, a modern workplace shaped by Christian faith, where they’re helping troubled workers get back on their feet while delivering a product that beautifies the world. After a tour of OWT’s workplace, we’re looking forward to lunch with their work crew!

There will be no fee to attend the retreat. If you cover your travel, we’ll provide the meals and all the rest – including, especially, the rest. 

To join us, please take two minutes to register for the retreat. 

We’ll be meeting from dinner on Monday, August 4 until lunch on Wednesday, August 6.

Dinner on Monday and Tuesday as well as lunch on Tuesday and Wednesday will be provided. If you stay at the Asbury Inn, breakfast is included with your room. 

Highlights will include:

• Guided reflection and conversation on how to educate the heart in the “AI moment,” to revitalize our calling in theological education

• Real community and collaboration on field trips to immersive environments, historical and modern

• World-class workshops facilitated by longtime friend of the Fellowship Nathan Hitchcock

Here’s the schedule for the retreat; more details are on the way!

Monday, August 4

6:00pm Dinner and conversation at Solomon’s Porch

Tuesday, August 5

8:00am Gather at Asbury, depart for Shaker Village

9:00am Private Group Tour at Shaker Village

10:30am Explore Shaker Village 

12:00pm Lunch at the Trustees’ Table at Shaker Village

1:00pm Depart Shaker Village

2:00pm Group conversation at Asbury

3:00pm Free time in the afternoon

6:00pm Dinner and conversation at Solomon’s Porch

Wednesday, August 6

8:00am Gather at Asbury, group conversation

9:00am Depart for Old World Timber

9:30am Tour of Old World Timber

10:30am Group conversation at Old World Timber

12:00pm Lunch with the crew at Old World Timber

1:00pm Transport provided to the airport or back to Asbury

If you’re flying, arrive in Lexington; the Asbury Inn has an airport shuttle.

To join us, please take two minutes to register for the retreat. 

Then, to book a room at the Asbury Inn:

• Go to the Asbury Inn website

• In the upper right corner, click “Book Your Stay”

• You’ll get a message with information for students. Just click “Continue”

• Enter check-in (Aug. 4) and check-out (Aug. 6) dates and click “GO”

• Scroll down to the room listing and click “Book Now”

Like we said, last year we ran out of spaces, so don’t delay!

Regsister to attend and reserve your room for the Aug. 4-6 faculty retreat today!

Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”

Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

John 20:24-31

What It Is, Christina Bieber Lake, Art & Soul

On the power of beauty to transform us.

Moral Agency and Sustainable Liberalism, Ralph Hancock, Public Discourse

Jonathan Rauch’s proposal for renewing the alliance between Christianity and political liberalism offers promising solutions for the main problems facing both Christians and liberals. But it requires a new theology of agency. (Read part two here.)

Integrating Faith and Academic Administration, Derek Shuurman, Christian Scholar’s Review

Every school highlights “faith/learning integration,” but what about “faith/administration integration”? Here are three ideas on how faith transforms the work of academic administration.

Cultivating Curious Classrooms, Alice Dreger, Free the Inquiry

“How you teach is what you teach,” and other veteran tips on inspiring students to get out of their comfort zones in an age of intellectual conformity.

The American: A Frank Capra Retrospective, Ryan Shinkel, Mere Orthodoxy

What does it mean to be American?

Kierkegaard’s Philosophy of Love, Zachary Hardman, Engelsberg Ideas

His idea that despair could be transformed into hope under the influence of love resonates in our age of pessimism.

An Antidote to Civic Educational Decline, Karen Howes, Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism

The best way to reject indoctrination is to rekindle wonder.

Why Americans Aren’t Marrying, Wendy Wang, Institute for Family Studies

Data show the main obstacle to marriage and childbirth isn’t money or career, but finding the right partner. The “soulmate” ideal is an obstacle to successful dating.

Reports of Gen Z’s Lameness Are Greatly Exaggerated, Arden Yum, Persuasion

I don’t recognize myself or my peers in the popular mythology about our generation’s supposed dysfunctions.

The Promise of Modern Architecture, Tyler Syck, Law & Liberty

The classical architecture movement often throws out the baby with the bathwater.

Stop Striving and Have a Baby, Nicholas Clairmont, The Free Press

Growing up rich in Manhattan, I was taught that becoming a parent meant your life was over. My baby daughter has taught me otherwise.

“O Solomon, I Have Outdone You!”

Note: From The Cost of Ambition (Brazos, 2025). Reprinted by permission of the publisher. Citations have been omitted.

“Glory be to God who considered me worthy of this task! O Solomon, I have outdone you!” So the Roman emperor Justinian the Great (527-62) is reported to have exclaimed on December 26, 537. Most of us are nothing like Justinian in stature, yet we can recognize his desire to outdo a competitor, small or large, as our own.

Anything You Can Do….

Accompanied by the patriarch and a multitude of the faithful, Justinian made the triumphant exclamation as he was consecrating Hagia Sophia, the stunning archetype of Byzantine architecture, a project into which he had poured a great deal of energy and resources, hovering over the design and construction like a hawk. The exclamation is likely apocryphal, but the striving for superiority to which it gives expression was genuine and fierce. He thought he had proven himself superior to Solomon, the builder of Israel’s first temple and, according to the book Justinian regarded as holy, a man of unmatchable wisdom. Solomon, too, had been competing for superiority. The house that was to be built for the God who “is greater than other gods” had to be, his father, King David, instructed him, “exceedingly magnificent, famous and glorified throughout all lands” (II Chronicles 2:5; I Chronicles 22:5). The greatness of his God and the majesty of the house he was to build for God were both to redound to Solomon’s superiority. And Justinian, in completing Hagia Sophia, had proven himself superior to Solomon.

Justinian was not the one who had started the building competition with Solomon in Constantinople. In 527, Anicia Juliana, a descendant of Western emperors and a woman of great wealth, had completed a majestic building of her own, the Church of St. Polyeuktos. When the church was built, it “was the largest and most sumptuous church in the city.” [R. M. Harrison, “The Church of St. Polyeuktos in Istanbul and the Temple of Solomon,” in Harvard Ukrainian Studies 7, p. 279] It was decorated with palm trees, pomegranates, vine scrolls, open flowers and capitals shaped like lilies – all themes drawn straight from the biblical descriptions of Solomon’s temple. Moreover, one hundred cubits square (a biblical standard unit of measure, not a Roman one!), the church was designed to resemble the yet greater eschatological temple of Ezekiel’s visions. In scale and costliness, Juliana’s church exceeded any other church in the capital at the time of construction. The dedicatory poem for the church includes the line “She [Juliana] alone did violence to time and surpassed the wisdom of renowned Solomon by raising a habitation for God.” [Anne McClanan, Representations of Early Byzantine Empresses: Image and Empire, p. 96-97]

The Church of St. Polyeuktos was dedicated in the year of Justinian’s accession to the throne. It must have been a thorn in his flesh, especially as Juliana was a descendant of Roman royalty, while he was of Illyrian peasant stock. And then there was her large fortune. He wanted her to contribute part of it to the state treasury. She stalled – and then melted much of her gold into plates with which she adorned the interior of the roof of her church.

Justinian’s opportunity to outdo Juliana came in 532 when another church was destroyed by fire during the Nika Riots. The plans for the new church were ready in forty days, “suggesting that there had been considerable prior preparation even before the Nika Riots had actually made necessary the rebuilding of the church.” [John W. Barker, Justinian and the Later Roman Empire, p. 183] Completed after only five years of work at a breakneck pace and with unstinting funding from the emperor, the edifice was a breathtaking achievement. The church was twice the size of Juliana’s, and it dwarfed Solomon’s temple. According to I Kings 6, Solomon’s temple was 27.43 meters long, 9.14 meters wide and 17.73 meters high and took seven years to complete. Justinian’s Hagia Sophia was twenty-four times the footprint area of Solomon’s temple, was fifty-five meters tall and took only five years to complete. More importantly, architectural advances and its novel design meant that the building let in a tremendous amount of light compared to its predecessors, including the Roman Pantheon. Streaming in through multiple windows at different angles, light flooded the space and interacted brilliantly with its surfaces – large expanses of marble floor and extraordinary stretches of polychrome mosaics running across curved and straight surfaces. It was an earthly new Jerusalem, a space worthy to be God’s dwelling.

….I Can Do Better

Justinian thus surpassed both his ancient rival, Solomon, and his contemporary rival, Juliana. With his church built, he could even boast that he had made Constantinople, the new capital of the empire, surpass Rome, the old capital. The poet and courtier to Justinian, Paul the Silentiary (d. ca. 575), boasted for him: “By raising this infinite temple about your arm, he has made you [Constantinople] more brilliant than your mother on the Tiber who bore you. Give way, I say, renowned Roman Capitol, give way! My Emperor has so far overtopped that wonder as great God is superior to an idol!” [Paul the Silentiary, “Description of Hagia Sophia,” in Peter N. Bell, Three Political Voices from the Age of Justinian, p. 197]

Splendiferous as Hagia Sophia was, the problems with the design and the rushed construction, partly the effects of striving for superiority, began to show almost immediately. Robert Ousterhout describes in detail the ways the unprecedented weight of the building exacerbated structural defects. In addition, the haste of construction meant building on top of mortar that had not yet fully dried, creating a situation of “plastic flow” leading to permanent deformation. Attempts were made to correct these issues as construction advanced, but, ultimately, an earthquake in 557 led to the collapse of the dome. Juliana had died in 527 and could neither be humiliated by the great church nor experience Schadenfreude when its dome collapsed. The building has been repaired several times since, but it is still largely continuous with that rebuilt structure, designed by the son of one of the original architects and rededicated in 562 by a presumably chastened Justinian.

Excellence and upmanship pursued together; magnificence achieved and failure suffered at the same time; extortion and exploitation along with great artisanship and dedication; gratitude to God expressed in the same breath as hubristic, almost fantastical, rivalry. Such are some of the problems of Justinian’s striving for superiority.

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