FACULTY
Philosopher, Apologist and Resource for Doubting Students
Student, staff member, adjunct instructor, longtime professor, parent and neighbor: Jim Taylor ’78 connects with Westmont in all these ways. He retires in May after a 31-year career teaching philosophy.
His student experience shaped his future. Jim struggled with serious doubts his senior year while studying philosophy. Participating in the first Potter’s Clay trip to Ensenada helped restore his faith. Initially blaming philosophy for triggering his doubts, he soon identified the culprit: bad philosophy. He earned a master’s degree in theology at Fuller Theological Seminary intending to pursue ministry.
“Then I realized I preferred teaching, reading and writing and found a calling as philosophy professor to help students with their struggles and doubts,” he says. After completing a master’s degree and doctorate in philosophy at the University of Arizona, Jim taught at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, earning tenure there. But when his former philosophy teachers recruited him to join the Westmont faculty, he embraced the opportunity to return and serve as a resource for doubting students.
Overcoming his own doubts as a student inspired him to specialize in apologetics. His books include: “Introducing Apologetics: Cultivating Christian Commitment”; “Learning for Wisdom: Christian Education and the Good Life”; and with his wife, Jennifer, “Soul Pilgrimage: Knowing God in Everyday Life.”
“Philosophy equips you for doing well in a wide range of careers and for thinking critically and globally and communicating effectively,” he says. “I enjoy introducing it to students, raising questions and getting them to think. I focus on answers and rational reassurance of faith; I spent half of my career raising questions and the other half answering them.”
Jim connects with students in the classroom and at the lunch table. “Forming friendships benefits both students and professors,” he says. “It’s wonderful to belong to a community.” Sharing his own experiences with the choir, student ministry and Potter’s Clay helps him relate to students.
Jim has explored the issue of civility and character and believes our public conversation wounds our nation and prevents us from solving our problems. “What would it take to listen to each other with respect and openness?” he says. “We need a renewed commitment to crucial, neglected qualities of character.”
He also emphasizes character when he teaches Nursing for Human Flourishing for Westmont Downtown | Grotenhuis Nursing. “Nurses grapple with the problem of evil and suffering and confront challenges such as abortion and assisted suicide,” he says. “Addressing these issues requires moral teaching. The better person you are, the stronger your moral and spiritual character, the better nurse you’ll be. Nursing students seem skeptical about the class at first before realizing they need wisdom and virtue to practice holistic nursing.”
Jim and Jennifer walked the Camino de Santi- ago during his 2018 sabbatical. “We wanted to experience pilgrimage as an act of spiritual discipline,” he says. “We discovered that our physical pilgrimages would facilitate our spiritual pilgrimages only if our preparation involved ongoing interior soul work — primarily through various types of prayer — as well as bodily exercise and the right kind of hiking equipment.”
A recipient of the Teacher of the Year award in the Humanities Division, Jim belongs to the American Philosophical Association and the Society of Christian Philosophers. He ends his career as vice chair of the faculty.
All three of his children, Sarah Butcher ’07, Ben ’09 and Nathaniel ’15, graduated from Westmont, as did Ben’s wife, Meg Anders Taylor ’11. Jim and Jennifer, who spent 15 years connecting Westmont students to internships, will enjoy seeing their four grand- children more often — and travel together.
“Can a philosophy class help students become better people?” Jim asks. “Can a Christian liberal arts education contribute to the formation of good citizens? I hope people who meet my students and read my books will agree with me in answering ‘yes’ to both.”
This is a story from the Spring 2025 Westmont Magazine