Annual Meeting

The 16th Annual Meeting of the Consortium of Christian Study Centers will be held at Upper House in Madison, WI, hosted by the SL Brown Foundation. This page will be updated with details about Upper House and the Annual Meeting as they become available.

Meghan Sullivan

Wilsey Family College Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame

Meghan Sullivan is the Wilsey Family College Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. She serves as Director of the University-wide Ethics Initiative and is the founding director of Notre Dame’s Institute for Ethics and the Common Good (ethics.nd.edu). The university hub for research and teaching in ethics, the Institute includes the new Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C, Center for Virtue Ethics and the Notre Dame–IBM Technology Ethics Lab. The Institute is home to faculty program chairs, postdoctoral fellows, PhD students, and undergraduates and runs several residential fellowship programs for faculty, nonprofit leaders, and faith leaders.

Sullivan is deeply interested in the ways philosophy contributes to the good life and the best methods for promoting philosophical thought. She has served as PI for major grants to advance ethics and human flourishing, from agencies including the John Templeton Foundation, the Lilly Endowment, the Mellon Foundation, and the NEH. Time Biases, her 2018 book with Oxford University Press, offers philosophical guidance about how to navigate the puzzles that the passage of time poses to rational planning. It was featured in a 2021 New Yorker piece. In 2022, Sullivan published The Good Life Method with Penguin Press (co-authored with her teaching collaborator Paul Blaschko) based on a wildly popular introductory philosophy course she developed at Notre Dame called “God and the Good Life.” Since 2016, “God and the Good Life” has accompanied thousands of Notre Dame students through the process of developing a philosophical plan for their lives. In the past, Sullivan has collaborated with faculty in other departments to offer courses on NBC’s The Good Place, Ted Chiang’s science fiction, and Thom Browne’s fashion empire.

Sullivan is currently working on a book about the role of love in our moral lives. She is also directing a major grant project with scholars and nonprofit leaders to expand the love ethic, as well as a major planning grant considering the role of Christian thought in AI ethics. Sullivan will be a featured speaker at the 2025 TED Next Conference.

Sullivan has been honored with one of Notre Dame’s Joyce Awards for Teaching, with the Provost’s All-Faculty Team Award, and with the City of South Bend’s 40 Under 40 Award. In 2025 she joined the Board of Directors of Commonweal. Sullivan holds degrees from the University of Virginia (B.A.: Philosophy and Politics, Highest Distinction), Oxford (B.Phil: Philosophy), and Rutgers (Ph.D.: Philosophy), and studied at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar (Balliol College). Sullivan enjoys cooking, building elaborate Lego sets, reading science fiction, and traveling the world. She cheers for the Fighting Irish and Virginia Cavaliers in all of their endeavors, and when they play each other she has a rational crisis.

Brad East

Associate Professor of Bible, Missions and Ministry at Abilene Christian University

Brad East teaches theology at Abilene Christian University in West Texas, where he lives with his wife and four children. He is a theologian, professor, and author. He is also a co-host of the Mere Fidelity podcast. His scholarly interests lie in certain major Christian loci: the doctrine of Scripture (or bibliology), the doctrine of the church (or ecclesiology), the doctrine of the Trinity (or theology proper), as well as overlapping or offshoot topics, such as theological hermeneutics, the sacraments, political philosophy, war and nonviolence, and technology.

In addition to editing Robert Jenson’s The Triune Story: Collected Essays on Scripture (Oxford University Press, 2019), he is the author of five books: The Doctrine of Scripture (Cascade, 2021), The Church’s Book: Theology of Scripture in Ecclesial Context (Eerdmans, 2022), The Church: A Guide to the People of God (Lexham, 2024), Letters to a Future Saint: Foundations of Faith for the Spiritually Hungry (Eerdmans, 2024), and the forthcoming Technology: For the Care of Souls (Lexham, 2026). His articles have been published in Modern Theology, International Journal of Systematic Theology, Scottish Journal of Theology, Journal of Theological Interpretation, Anglican Theological Review, Pro Ecclesia, Political Theology, Religions, Restoration Quarterly, and The Other Journal; his essays and reviews have appeared in The Christian Century, Christianity Today, Comment, Commonweal, First Things, Front Porch Republic, The Hedgehog Review, Living Church, Los Angeles Review of Books, Marginalia Review of Books, Mere Orthodoxy, The New Atlantis, Plough, and The Point.

You can found out more, including links to his writing, podcast appearances, and blog, on his personal website by clicking the button below.