Alex Sosler

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Alex Sosler is Assistant Professor of Bible and Ministry at Montreat College and Assisting Priest at Redeemer Anglican Church in Asheville, NC. He is also author of Learning to Love: Christian Higher Education as Pilgrimage (Falls City Press) and editor of Theology and the Avett Brothers (Fortress/Lexington).

Recent Essays

Education as Pilgrimage

Alex Sosler -
"We seem to be born homesick, and that homesickness is meant to lead us into a life of pilgrimage.” Walker Percy Black Mountain,...

Attentional Arts and Beholding Beauty

Alex Sosler -
Contemplation of God is paying attention to what demands one’s attention—more than information discovered or expression felt. Contemplating art can be a means, a sort of preparatory practice, of contemplating the Beautiful One from which all beauty is derivative.

An Education That Turns on Affection

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Alex Sosler compares online and in-person education. Paradoxically, when we embrace the limits of our embodied existence and learn with and from particular classmates in a particular place from a particular teacher, affections develop. Imagination stirs.

The Liberal Arts for Loss and Lament

Alex Sosler -
The main posture of a liberal arts education is slowing down, rest, seeing. But if we just train students to only strive, reach, stretch for something more, then suffering will come as a wasteful, meaningless interruption.

Ted Lasso as Parish Priest

Alex Sosler -
Ted Lasso offers a compelling model of a good parish priest: this fictional football coach exemplifies how to lead others with care.

Sacred Reality: The Augustinian Vision of Goodness in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead

Alex Sosler -
Robinson presents us with an encounter: a participatory, embodied experience; a blessed and broken reality; the sacraments. And from this encounter, we receive courageous eyes to see the precious things that have been placed in our hands and to honor them accordingly.

The Instrumentalization of the Liberal Arts

Alex Sosler -
The liberal arts aren’t for some utilitarian purpose; they’re to free young people to love rightly.

Failing in a Pandemic

Alex Sosler -
The whole mode of online education screams that now I must be the source of attraction. But I’m not entertaining. In fact, I’m pretty unentertaining. If you ask most of my students, they may even say I’m boring.

The Classroom as a Welcoming Space

Alex Sosler -
If we have all the knowledge in the world but have not love, the apostle Paul says, then we’re as annoying as a banging cymbal. It’s no wonder students wouldn’t want to listen to us.

Waiting, Seeing, and Receiving

Alex Sosler -
Advent is a reminder that God has not forgotten—that He is faithful to His promises, that we're not left to our own devices, that he hears and knows.

The Temptation of Minimalism and Excess: A Simple Home in an Abundant World

Alex Sosler -
In the discussion of minimalism, I want to suggest it’s less about what’s in your home than what your home is used for. It’s not what you don’t have in your home, but the people you do. It’s not the values you say you believe, but your disposition towards your neighbor and to things.
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