Dr. Christopher Towles creates environments where people can wonder, question, and grow at Wake Forest University as a CBF Endorsed Chaplain.
Welcome to the BSU website. In addition to being the campus minister for the BSU I teach in the divinity school and also teach a variety of classes at the community college such as New Testament. While I was an associate chaplain at Wake I was the faculty adviser for the Interfaith Council and I've enjoyed ecumenical projects with our other Christian groups on campus. Baptist Student Union is a community that has meant a great deal to me and my family over the years. It's a community that was there for me as I traveled on my spiritual journey through my undergraduate years and I love being able to walk along side students as they grow in faith.
Some of my favorite quotes:
Never be afraid to ask questions about the work we have inherited or the work we are doing. There is no question that should not be asked or that is outlawed. The day we are completely satisfied with what we have been doing; the day we have found the perfect, unchangeable system of work, the perfect answer, never in need of being corrected again, on that day we will know that we are wrong, that we have made the greatest mistake of all - VJ Donovan Do not dismiss the truth of something you do not understand.
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. - Galileo Galilei
If everyone is thinking the same thing, someone isn't thinking.
There's a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause.
- P. J. O'Rourke
"When I gave food to the poor, they called me a saint; when I asked why were there so many poor, they called me a communist. "
Even when you can't believe, even if you don't believe at all, even if you shy away at the sound of his name, be Christ. - Buechner
I refuse to accept that the is-ness of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal ought-ness that forever confronts him. - MLK, Jr.
I expect to pass through this world but once. Any good things, therefore, that I can do, any kindness that I can show a fellow being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again. -- Stephen Grellet.
“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace.” -- Frederick Buechner
It has been my conviction ever since reading Walter Rauschenbusch that any religion which professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the social and economic conditions that scar the soul is a spiritually moribund religion. -- ML King, Jr.
...we have put our hope in the living God, who is the savior of all people, and especially of those who believe. 1 Tim 4:10
The notion of a Christian commonwealth should be exploded forever...Government
should protect every man in thinking and speaking freely, and see that one does not abuse another. The liberty I contend for is more than toleration. The very idea of toleration is despicable; it supposes that some have a pre-eminence above the rest to grant indulgence, whereas all should be equally free, Jews, Turks, Pagans and Christians. - John Leland from A Chronicle of His Time in Virginia