Hi! I’m Enthusiasmos, and as one of the Mere Orthodoxy team, my goal is to imagine and live the examined life in the 21st century, and to help others do the same.I seem to relate most easily with people who feel the terrible fragmentation of the self and who are longing for its correction. Since the Enlightenment, Renaissance and Reformation the intellect has become divorced from the emotions and the will, and we cannot be fully human until we recognize this and undo the damage. In high school I become aware of deep emotional wounds sustained while living in a fragmented and dysfunctional family; in college I realized my (perhaps deeper) intellectual wounds deriving from a host of false beliefs about the world, myself, my fellow human beings, and our creator.

But God is good. Hospitalization has begun, and intensive treatment is the only option. The diagnosis? Sin, ignorance, immorality, anti-intellectualism, and pride. The prognosis? Holiness, knowledge, morality, truth, and humility. The medicine? Dwelling in him as he is in us; intensive dialectical examination of the great minds of the past; self-control; the wisdom from books and from men; daily doses of silence and solitude.

Mere-O is a repository of these therapeutic exercises for the similarly fragmented person who longs to be whole, one, healthy, full of knowledge and wisdom.

Since graduating from the Torrey Honors Institute in 2004, I have been endeavoring to become formed into the image and likeness of God in all aspects, physical, conative, moral, intellectual, and spiritual. I have been leading discussions at the high school and college level as well as contributing a few articles and lectures to my fellows at Biola University in La Mirada, CA. I have recently begun to teach high school at Torrey Academy. Contact me at circularreason@gmail.com.

Tex

Tex has been part of the Mere Orthodoxy team since 2004, blogging on and off since then on a variety of subjects–ranging from Christian epistemology and just war theory to the importance of the semi-colon.

A graduate from Biola University’s Torrey Honors Institute and an officer and therefore, by congressional proclamation, a gentleman in the United State Air Force, he draws on his background in philosophy and the humanities, his education in the classical stlye, and his world travels as an air mobility asset to address issues within and without the military, American culture, and Christendom–as construed as broadly as possible by a dedicated evangelical Christian.

Tex writes with the express purpose of giving old ideas a new lease on life (the good ones, anyways), of promoting real thought in a society that is overloaded by soundbytes and information, and, less altruistically, to help himself think through the issues that are of existential import to himself.

If anything he says is of interest to you, if you’d like to hire his writing skills for a specific purpose, of if you feel like taking a guess at what his real name is, contact him at lemontex at yahoo.com.

Jeremy Mann

Jeremy Mann teaches math to students with special needs at a middle school in Los Angeles through the Teach For America program. In 2008 he graduated from Biola University with a degree in philosophy. Jeremy has presented or published on the history of philosophy, ethics, G.K. Chesterton, and globalization. He likes to read, trek, and homemake in Echo Park with his wife, a nurse at UCLA Medical Center. He also hopes to one day be the president of a Christian college. Email him at Jeremyrmann at gmail dot com

Cate MacDonald

Cate MacDonald is a student at Talbot Theological Seminary studying spiritual formation. She is deeply interested in sanctification, incarnational living, vocation, the theology of the family, hospitality (both emotional and physical), the spirit of adoption, and educational theory.  She graduated from Biola University and the Torrey honors Institute in 2006 with a degree in English Literature and now narrowly avoids destitution as a spiritual director, editor, teacher and administrative assistant. She would like to someday write for a living, but is working on having something worthwhile to say. You can reach her at CateJMacDonald at gmail dot com.

Andrew Walker

Andrew Walker is a relative nobody, quoted by few, if any individuals or publications. He insists that the only redeeming quality about him is the gospel, which overcame a hardened heart and brought light to darkness (2 Cor 4:4-6).

Besides his best attempts at humility, he is an M.Div. student at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Married to Christian for three years, he is politically conservative and concerned with engaging the contemporary Zeitgeist with amiable, yet combative gusto. He aspires to teach, pastor, or work for a faith-based public policy organization.

Influenced by an eclectic set of thinkers, he claims a “Generous Orthodoxy” but is one, unlike the unnamed and recalcitrant author alluded to, who is actually orthodox. He cherishes The Permanent Things and insists that theology is deeply and profoundly essential in our Christian reflection upon political theory, ethics, economics, culture, and philosophy. All this is aimed at advancing a chastened & prudent approach to evangelical engagement in-step with Karl Barth who once stated that Christians are to engage the world “confidently, yet cautiously.”

In his free-time, he enjoys the above-mentioned pursuits and verbiage along with running, coffee, movies with his wife, St. Louis Cardinal’s baseball, so-called “conversational punditry” with good friends, and inventing ever-more clever attempts at waxing and polishing his online ego, present biography included.

Retired Members of Mere-O

Andrew Selby (04-07)

Elliot Ravenwood (04-07)