Disciple Scholars

About

Two psychologists, one long conversation

Draft for the authors to correct

The book

Letters to a Young Disciple-Scholar grew out of a question students keep bringing to their professors’ offices: how do you study human beings seriously without trading away what you believe a human being is?

It answers in eight letters from a professor to a student about to leave for graduate school in psychology: how to integrate faith and scholarship rather than trading one for the other, how to notice the assumptions a discipline carries, and how to stay both an excellent scholar and an unapologetic disciple of Christ.

The letters are meant to be read in order, one at a time. Each ends with the principles it argues for, questions to think over or discuss, a short quiz, and letters from former students to read closely. You can listen to them as well as read them, and you can write back. The whole book is free to read here; a printed edition will follow.

The authors

Jeffrey L. Thayne

Jeffrey Thayne teaches psychology at Brigham Young University–Idaho, where he spends much of his time mentoring students. He studied psychology at Brigham Young University (BS, MS) and earned his doctorate in Instructional Technology and Learning Sciences at Utah State University.

He writes about the intersection of the gospel of Jesus Christ and culture, including at his long-running blog, Latter-day Saint Philosopher, and speaks on faith, psychology, and the power of worldviews.

Edwin E. Gantt

Edwin Gantt is a professor of psychology at Brigham Young University. He earned his doctorate in clinical psychology at Duquesne University, with a focus on existential-phenomenological psychology.

His scholarship concerns moral agency, the nature of psychological explanation, and the relationship between religion, science, and psychology, often questioning naturalistic and deterministic accounts of human life. With Richard N. Williams he edited Psychology for the Other and wrote On Hijacking Science, and he has served as an editor for the Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology.

Together they also wrote Who Is Truth? Reframing Our Questions for a Richer Faith.

The letters are written in a single voice: one professor writing to one student. That voice is a composite of two teachers and many conversations with students over the years, which is why each letter is signed simply “your friend and professor.”

AI Disclosure

The letters are ours. We wrote and revised them ourselves, and we checked their prose with an AI-detection tool as we went, rewriting passages it flagged.

We did use AI for the work around the letters, and we want to say where:

  • The glossaries and reading notes (“Terms and Concepts,” “Additional Readings”) were drafted with AI (Anthropic’s Claude) and then revised by us.
  • The quizzes, the letters from former students, and the questions for reflection and discussion began as AI drafts that we reviewed and edited.
  • Copyediting: AI tools (Claude and OpenAI’s Codex) suggested corrections, and checked citations against their sources; we accepted or rejected each one ourselves.
  • The read-along audio is AI-generated speech (ElevenLabs), in a voice cloned from Jeffrey’s own recording, reading text we wrote and approved.
  • Some drawings were made with AI image tools (Midjourney and OpenAI’s) from our descriptions.
  • This website was built with Claude, and the summaries of classroom poll answers are written by AI from students’ own words.

Every word on these pages has been read and approved by us, and the responsibility for it, including any errors, is ours.

Letters by email

We’ll write when there’s something new: each letter as it’s finished, the books to come, news, and related writing.

I’d like to hear when there’s something new. I can change or stop it from a link in any email. Your address is kept by the authors alone, used only for this, and we’ll ask you to confirm it first.