Dr. Bud Maher welcomes Dr. Stephen Lawson, newly appointed associate professor of theology at Newman University in Wichita, Kansas, for a wide-ranging conversation about his journey from the Stone-Campbell restorationist movement into full communion with the Catholic Church. Drawing on years of rigorous theological study — from Ozark Christian College to Saint Louis University — Dr. Lawson traces how patristics, sacramental theology, and the writings of figures like Stanley Hauerwas and Erik Peterson gradually clarified the call to become Catholic. The episode also touches on the joys and challenges of teaching theology to today's students and offers an early reflection on Pope Leo's encyclical Magnificat Humanitas.
This week on The Uncommon Good, Dr. Bud Maher flies solo while Bo Bonner continues his doctoral studies in England. His guest is Dr. Stephen Lawson, a longtime friend and newly appointed associate professor of theology at Newman University in Wichita, Kansas — a position so new he hasn't appeared on the university's website yet. Check back at newman.edu this fall to follow his work.
The Stone-Campbell Movement
Dr. Lawson grew up in Grayson, Kentucky, the son of two Bible college professors deeply rooted in the Stone-Campbell (restorationist) movement — a tradition that intentionally uses generic church names like "Church of Christ" or "Christian Church" to emphasize unity over denominationalism. He explains the movement's founding principle ("where the Bible speaks, we speak; where the Bible is silent, we are silent"), its surprisingly robust understanding of baptism and weekly Eucharist, and how its Biblicist roots ironically pushed many of its most serious scholars toward deeper engagement with church history.
The Academic Journey
From Ozark Christian College in Joplin, Missouri, to Emmanuel Christian Seminary, and finally to Saint Louis University's PhD program in historical theology, Dr. Lawson describes how immersion in the Cappadocian Fathers, Augustine, and patristic scholarship created a hunger the Stone-Campbell tradition couldn't fully satisfy. He reflects on a remarkable cohort of fellow Stone-Campbell scholars at SLU — including mutual friends Alex Giltner, Jordan Wood, and Alden Bass — many of whom have since entered the Catholic Church.
Hauerwas, Peterson, and Newman
Two thinkers proved pivotal: ethicist Stanley Hauerwas, whose radical ecclesiology pushed Lawson to ask serious questions about what the Church actually is, and Protestant-turned-Catholic theologian Erik Peterson (1890–1960), whose conversion story Lawson wrote his dissertation on. He was asked three times during his dissertation defense: Why aren't you Catholic?
Landing the Airplane
The decisive moment came when an institutional merger at Austin Graduate School of Theology — where Lawson was teaching — produced an administrator's claim that a theology degree was "basically the same thing" as a degree in marriage and family therapy. That reduction of Christianity to a subjective self-help tool made staying in a subjectivist tradition impossible. He and his wife Emily entered RCIA at St. Ignatius Martyr Church in Austin, Texas, and entered full communion with the Catholic Church. Their baptisms were recognized as valid; no rebaptism was needed.
Teaching Theology Today
After three years teaching at a Catholic high school in St. Louis, Dr. Lawson reflects on what really matters in the classroom. His approach shifted away from memorizing theological vocabulary toward helping students encounter Christ through texts — most notably, using Augustine's Confessions as a mirror for students to map their own spiritual geographies and key life moments.
Pope Leo's Encyclical
Dr. Lawson offers an early take on Magnificat Humanitas, Pope Leo's new encyclical on human dignity and artificial intelligence, describing it as a text with real, lasting impact — one that calls the Church back to the concrete, local, embodied person in an age of commodification and algorithmic control. He sees limited room for AI in theological education, where the goal is encounter, not output.
Dr. Lawson's conversion essay is available through his Facebook page. Look for his published work in the Newman Studies Journal. Dr. Bud Maher teases a return visit to go deeper on the encyclical.
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