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January 2023

January 17, 2023

The Spirit of the Lord is Upon Me . . .

Spring semester classes start today. One of my courses is a team-taught colloquium with a...

January 12, 2023

What Compost Piles Teach Us About Faith

Over the past year or so I have read several books by Peter Enns, a...

January 07, 2023

Jesus and John Gather at the River

The season of Epiphany, squeezed in between the Christmas season and Lent, is the annual...

December 2022

December 27, 2022

“It has been done in your name”: A cautionary tale from Charles Dickens

This year Jeanne and I spent this year at home for Christmas for the first...

December 15, 2022

How to Get Along with People Who Aren’t Like You

As I begin to prepare for my next book project, a memoir on the teaching...

December 13, 2022

The Incarnation or the Resurrection?

A few years ago, a Facebook friend posted a poll on her site. The question...

December 07, 2022

Why Should We Be Hopeful?

Herodotus is considered to be the first true historian in the contemporary sense of the...

November 2022

November 29, 2022

Living the Social Gospel: Your faith is not just about you

In the interdisiplinary and team-taught honors course I am teaching in this academic year, we...

November 27, 2022

Happy Advent–Stay Awake!

Happy New Year! Today is the First Sunday of Advent, the first day of the...

November 12, 2022

“The Heart Has Its Reasons . . .”: My Evidence Against Atheism

Although I estimate that at least 80-90 percent of the negative comments and pushback I...

November 10, 2022

The Lady Macbeth School of Leadership

Last weekend I attended a student production of Macbeth on campus, the first such production...

November 08, 2022

Why Stories are Better than Arguments

The best argument in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that...

November 03, 2022

Warthogs and Saints: Who Gets to be at the Front of the Line?

One of my colleagues and friends and I are beginning to construct the syllabus for...

November 01, 2022

Betting on God’s Existence

In my ethics class this week, we discussed an essay by Gary Gutting, who teaches...

October 2022

October 29, 2022

How to Make Certain Christians Very Angry

In the ten-plus years of this blog’s existence, I have made any number of Christians...

October 25, 2022

Karl Marx and Jesus Walk into a Bar . . .

We should read the New Testament as saying that how we treat each other on...

October 18, 2022

How is your Optimism Doing These Days?

A few weeks ago in the interdisciplinary Honors course that I am team-teaching in this...

October 16, 2022

Mapping Ghosts and Believing Things that Aren’t True

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

October 04, 2022

Persons, Humans, and Souls

What it means to be a person, and how that is different than being human,...

September 2022

September 27, 2022

Why Aren’t Red Maples Blue, and other random autumn thoughts

Autumn is my favorite season—not even a close contest. I grew up in northern Vermont,...

September 25, 2022

Which Is More Dangerous–Moral Certainty or Moral Relativism?

Do moral absolutes exist? Is human engagement with moral principles more like a treasure hunt,...

September 22, 2022

Autumn Peace is a Choice

Today is the first day of autumn. For those who love autumn as I do,...

September 20, 2022

Some Stories are Not Redemptive. But They All are Important

The first reading assignment in my General Ethics class this semester was Kate Jennings’ 2002...

September 18, 2022

How Many of Your Gods are Dead?

One of my greatest joys as a philosophy professor is that I get to be...

September 15, 2022

This Book Changed My Life: Kathleen Norris’ “The Cloister Walk”

I asked my Facebook friends at the beginning of the summer to list three or...

September 10, 2022

Remembering 9/11 and Becoming a Better Person

Everyone beyond a certain age can remember clearly what they were doing twenty-one years ago...

August 2022

August 30, 2022

It Is “The Best of Times” Once Again

Literary phrases for the beginning of a new academic year abound, such as Dickens' "It...

August 14, 2022

“Whatever” is No Way to Live

Although I occasionally find myself immersed in things medieval with a bunch of freshmen in...

August 11, 2022

Jesus Taught Us How To Be Human

Jeanne asked me a question about my blog the other day that, after I stopped...

August 09, 2022

Remembering David McCullough and Why the Liberal Arts Matter More than Ever

I was saddened to hear that David McCullough, one of the great historians of his...

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