Like Gandalf introducing positive chaos into the sleepy lives of Hobbiton, Ed Stengel tends to coax humor and confidence from students who at one time were “respectable” (i.e. quiet and serious). His deepest desire is for the abundant love that he feels for the material that he teaches to be contagious and for the students to experience a deepening desire to pursue God’s mystery for the rest of their lives and beyond.

Ed has a wealth of online classical teaching experience having taught Omnibus (History, Philosophy, and Literature) and Apologetics online for seven years and in-person International Baccalaureate Humanities and Biblical Studies at a Christian academy in Indonesia for three years. He graduated with an undergraduate degree in Education and Spanish from Southwest Baptist University which included a summer internship teaching at the University of Hubei in China. He received a Master of Arts in Imaginative Christian Apologetics from Houston Christian University, and his work has been published in various journals and blogs.

Outside of Academics Ed is the lead singer and banjo player of a moderately successful folk band which plays a modernized style of music pulling inspiration from traditions in his native Ozark Mountains of Southern Missouri. Ed lives in the rural Ozarks with his wife, Rebecca, his son, Caspian, and his German Shepherd, Marabell. He has a small farm which currently farms nothing but rocks, and he enjoys hiking adventures on Buffalo River. His favorite books are “Les Miserables” by Victor Hugo, “Moby Dick” by Herman Melville, “Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison, and all of the works of CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, and GK Chesterton.

The Great Conversation 1+4
The Great Conversation 2
The Great Conversation 4
Rhetoric 2 / Senior Thesis