Steven Garber has a classroom among many people in many places. As the director of The Washington Institute, the heart of his own calling is the longing that people understand the integral character of faith, vocation, and culture. Author of The Fabric of Faithfulness: Weaving Together Belief and Behavior (Second Ed., 2007), he writes frequently for various journals, and in addition was a contributor to the volumes Faith Goes to Work: Reflections From the Marketplace and Get Up Off Your Knees: Preaching the U2 Catalogue, as well as to the Mars Hill Audio journal, Tacit Knowing, Truthful Knowing: The Life and Work of Michael Polanyi.
For many years he taught on Capitol Hill in the American Studies Program, later serving as the scholar-in-residence for the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities.
He is particularly interested in the relationship of popular culture to political culture, and as expressions of that serves as a board member for Ransom Fellowship and the Blood:Water Mission, and as a consultant for the Wedgwood Circle. A native of the great valleys of Colorado and California, he is married to Meg and is the father of five children whose own callings have them scattered around the world.
Vocations of all sorts are equally important to the work of God in the world, as each one contributes to the common good, to what it is that makes our common welfare a place for more rather than less flourishing. In the life of Dave Kiersznowski and his DEMDACO Corporation, I see this become flesh in his business and life commitments.
“A Christianity that neglects the mystic element grows cold and congeals.” —Abraham Kuyper.
Why personal piety and public life can coexist.
What will you do with what you know?
College grads are being vocationally mentored through a church program that’s spreading across more than a dozen states.
If faith does shape vocation which does shape culture, then it is crucial to take the time to ask and answer the perennial questions that everyone asks and everyone answers, such as what do I believe about faith, vocation and culture? Those three words take us into realms that are difficult to fully fathom—and yet to understand them is central to human flourishing.
Only if the Christian vision of sexuality can make sense of what I feel most deeply, of what I know most profoundly . . . only then can I be persuaded of the Christian vision of everything else.
At the Washington Institute we continue to believe that it is the willingness to pray and work towards proximate justice—the vision of something, rather than all or nothing—that allows us to keep going, even as we face what often seems insurmountable and unchangeable.
Christians in politics must learn to accept some justice and some mercy.
By great grace, our deepest commitments and concerns can become like God’s.
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The first in a four-part Advent series on Mary.
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