Joshua Pauling

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https://sites.google.com/site/daddysworkshopofthecarolinas/

Joshua Pauling is vicar at All Saints Lutheran Church (LCMS) in Charlotte, NC. He is author of the book Education's End: Its Undoing Explained, Its Hope Reclaimed and co-author with Robin Phillips of the book Are We All Cyborgs Now? Reclaiming Our Humanity from the Machine. He is contributing editor at Salvo, columnist at Modern Reformation, and has written for a variety of other publications including Areo, CiRCE, Forma Journal, Front Porch Republic, Logia: A Journal of Lutheran of Lutheran Theology, The Lutheran Witness, Mere Orthodoxy, Merion West, Public Discourse, Quillette, The Imaginative Conservative, Touchstone, among others. He is a frequent guest on Issues Etc. Radio Show/Podcast. Josh also taught high school history for thirteen years and is now a classical educator and runs his own business making custom furniture and restoring vintage machinery. He studied at Messiah College, Reformed Theological Seminary, and Winthrop University, and is continuing his studies at Concordia Theological Seminary. He and his wife Kristi have two children.

Recent Essays

Steel-Manning the Amish: The Wisdom of Communal Discernment

Joshua Pauling - September 20, 2024

What the Amish understand perhaps more than we do is the necessity of maintaining and protecting domains of embodied human agency in our lives.

From Building Things to Building Institutions

Joshua Pauling - November 29, 2023

What struck me most in reading the book was the role of risk-taking and personal leadership in an organization’s founding phase, and the necessity of consolidating and institutionalizing its vision, so that it outlasts its founders. Such lessons have applicability far beyond the world of furniture.

Reality’s Bite: Responding to the Reality Privilege Argument

Joshua Pauling - August 26, 2022

Are those who question transhumanist progress or Metaverse predictions just knee-jerk Luddites whose visceral reactions are worthy of only a patronizing pat on the head for not seeing their own privilege? As might be expected of a Porcher, I don’t think so. Instead, those who are hesitant about digitality are remembering what it means to be embodied human beings and acknowledging the gravitas of reality’s bite - even when reality bites.

Your Brains are in Your Hands: Doug Stowe on Forming Mind, Hand, and Culture

Joshua Pauling - May 6, 2022

Stowe’s book is both timeless and timely. Our physical embodiment as human creatures is always essential, but it is especially so amid increasing digitality. The last two years of pandemic-related economic fluctuations and supply-chain instabilities have further driven home the importance of developing manual competence on a local and familial level, which adds to the book’s importance.

What are Hands For? Technology, Hands, and the Wounds of God

Joshua Pauling - April 15, 2022

Christ touches. With his hands he heals the sick, opens mouths, unstops ears, blesses the children, and raises the dead. And ultimately it is the marks in Christ’s hands that fully and definitively reveal his true identity in his post-Resurrection appearance to Thomas. Christ himself, the enfleshed God, invites Thomas to put his hand into the hands that made the world and saved the world.

The Classroom as Sanctified Space: Human Formation away from the Screen

Joshua Pauling - April 15, 2021

For the sake of human formation and flourishing, it is essential to carve out sanctified spaces of peace and refuge away from the mesmerizing pull of screens.

When Innovation Runs Out: The Vindication of Maintenance

Joshua Pauling - March 26, 2021

The Innovation Delusion goes a long way toward demystifying and destigmatizing the ordinary yet essential work of maintenance.

Jacques Barzun’s 1937 Critique of Race-Thinking

Joshua Pauling - November 18, 2020

On the heels of a consequential election, and the accompanying commentary demonstrating the continued pervasiveness of race-thinking, Barzun’s message of honoring each human individual’s value while recognizing our shared common humanity is a timely and timeless message.