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October 2024

October 04, 2024

When Christians Do Un-Christian Things

One of the teaching teammates I have taught with for the last half-dozen years is...

October 01, 2024

Living the Social Gospel

Next week in the interdisciplinary program I teach in will be "Social Gospel" week. Students...

September 2024

September 29, 2024

How to Delegate Authority

Today's lectionary reading from the Jewish scriptures is from Numbers. We find the liberated Israelites...

September 27, 2024

Why We Believe Things That Aren’t True

Over the years that I have been writing this blog, those who describe themselves as...

September 24, 2024

How to Make God Interesting

It is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for a [non-Christian] to hear a Christian, supposedly...

September 22, 2024

The Wisdom of Trees

In Psalm 1, one of the psalm options in today's lectionary readings, the righteous are...

September 20, 2024

Why Being Uncomfortable is a Good Thing

A new podcast that I've been enjoying recently is Ali Velshi's "Banned Book Club"--I highly...

September 17, 2024

Jesus and a Four-Letter Word

Next week will be one of my favorite teaching weeks of the semester as I...

September 15, 2024

Comfort is vastly overrated

In the interdisciplinary, team-taught course I am participating in this semester, we spent our second...

September 13, 2024

Corrupted Memory Files

My youngest son, Justin, has a remarkable memory–for, as he puts it, “totally useless facts.”...

September 06, 2024

First Day of Class Dreams and Nightmares

Last Tuesday was the first day of classes on my campus for the 2024-25 academic...

September 03, 2024

In all they do, they prosper

There are two kinds of living things. They are distinguished by the strategies they have...

September 01, 2024

A Labor Day Question: What Does the Lord Require of Us?

There are a couple of sayings attributed to Jesus that Christians often use when attempting...

August 2024

August 30, 2024

Getting Comfortable with Paradox

It is standard fare for Christians to believe that human beings are made of body...

August 23, 2024

Non-Toxic Masculinity on Display

The non-toxic masculinity that has been on display at the Democratic convention in Chicago this...

August 18, 2024

Dr. Seuss on Immanence and Transcendence

Today is Ordinary Time 13, the thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost. Here's the section for that...

August 13, 2024

Having the Right “Niyyah”

I recently heard an interview on NPR with Rami Nashashibi, a professor of sociology who...

August 11, 2024

Speaking the Truth in Love

During my youth and adolescence, my father was the president and primary fundraiser for a...

August 09, 2024

Where Hatred is Disguised as Love

A few days ago Jeanne said "I've got something you have to go to." I've...

August 06, 2024

Get Up and Eat

In one of the possible readings from the Jewish scriptures for this coming Sunday, we...

August 04, 2024

What Is This? A story about change

Organized religion often is a source of packaged answers and comfortable solutions to important questions...

August 02, 2024

The Dangers of Unexamined Faith

He lived over two millennia ago, and as far as we know he never wrote...

July 2024

July 30, 2024

Memories of Olympics Past

It often is a surprise to those who know that I am a college professor...

July 27, 2024

Jesus Caters a Very Large Picnic

Today's gospel is the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand, one of the few...

July 22, 2024

When a Word is a Complete Sentence

All of us live in a world filled with words. For academics, words are the...

July 14, 2024

The Head of John the Baptist

Today is the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost; the gospel reading from Mark tells the story...

July 11, 2024

There are Two Kinds of People . . .

I ran an informal experiment on Facebook the other day, the point of which was...

July 09, 2024

Where to Find Me

The end of my revision of my book A Year of Faith and Philosophy is in...

June 2024

June 20, 2024

Not Long Ago. Not Far Away

Jeanne and I went to the Auschwitz exhibition in Boston yesterday--it's there for the rest...

June 18, 2024

Feeding the Hungry Stranger

In the honors interdisciplinary program I teach in, my colleagues and I have chosen over...

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