Announcing the Winners of the Exploring Personhood Paper Contest

Center for Faith and Culture | January 21, 2022
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What does it mean to be human? The L. Russ Bush Center for Faith and Culture is proud to announce Exploring Personhood: What Is a Human Being? — a Faith + Culture Forum designed to address this and related important questions.

In conjunction with this conference, we recently invited submissions of abstracts on topics relevant to the conference’s theme.

The winning paper will be published in the Spring 2022 issue of the Southeastern Theological Review. The authors of the top three papers also win cash prizes ($700, $500, and $300, respectively), and we will publicly recognize the winners at Exploring Personhood conference.

Today, we proudly announce the winners.

Jordan Steffaniak

First Place: Jordan L. Steffaniak

Paper Title: The Ordered Animal: Accountability, Teleology, and Human Nature

Jordan L. Steffaniak (ThM, Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary) is co-founder of the London Lyceum. He also serves as the editor of the annual print journal Theologia Viatorum. He is a Research Fellow for the Center for Faith and Culture at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and is a PhD student in Philosophy at the University of Birmingham, UK, studying the intersection of Conciliar Christology and anthropology. He has a wonderful wife and two sons. He also works in the financial industry as a business intelligence analyst.

Second Place: Erin Smith

Paper Title: The Brain’s Default, Selves, and Telos

Dr. Erin I. Smith is California Baptist University’s Fletcher Jones Endowed Professor of Research and an associate professor of psychology. Trained in developmental psychology, her research explores issues at the intersection of science and Christianity, including the practices of effective church children’s ministry and how psychology informs theological anthropology.

Third Place: Drew Smith

Paper Title: All You Need Is Love: A Proposal For A Multifaceted Model of the Imago Dei Based on A Thomistic Conception of Love

Drew is a Ph.D student at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary where he also serves as Adjunct Professor of Philosophy. Prior to coming to Southwestern, he served as Youth Pastor for over five years in his hometown of Louisville, KY. While in Louisville, Drew completed an M.Div from Southern Seminary. He is married to his wife, Kate. They have two children, Cayden and Ivy.

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The L. Russ Bush Center for Faith and Culture seeks to engage culture as salt and light, presenting the Christian faith and demonstrating its implications for all areas of human existence.

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