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January 2023

January 10, 2023

Are You the One?

During both the Advent and the Epiphany liturgical seasons, John the Baptist gets a lot...

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...

January 05, 2023

Mediocrates Returns with Some Additional Wisdom

The college basketball season is in full swing. Although I have not posted about it...

December 2022

December 29, 2022

Is it the end of us? An end-of-the-year reflection

He who loves his life will lose it. John 12:25 I subscribe to two magazines, The...

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 06, 2022

“With Mutual Respect”–An Exercise in Eloquent Listening

On the last Wednesday of September, an event took place on my college campus that...

December 04, 2022

“Truthiness” and the Incarnation

In 2016, the Oxford Dictionary named “post-truth” as its word of the year, an adjective...

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 19, 2022

Living Life Forwards and Understanding it Backwards

Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards. Soren Kierkegaard One...

November 15, 2022

“Dear White America”: A Young Woman Reflects on her Inherent Racism

Yesterday was the final class in the “Race” unit in my General Ethics class; 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 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 22, 2022

What is Prayer Supposed to Accomplish?

Today's gospel lectionary reading reminds me of an August day several years ago when the...

October 20, 2022

The Best Answer for Unanswerable Questions: “I Don’t Know”

Natural disasters have been on my mind recently. Perhaps it's because of the fury of...

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 11, 2022

If You Meet a Stranger and If He’s Hungry, Feed Him

Yesterday was Columbus Day. Correction, it was Indigenous Peoples Day. This is not energized by...

October 06, 2022

What it is Like to Be a Snob

A bit over a week ago at my brother-in-law’s wake, I spent several minutes chatting...

October 04, 2022

Persons, Humans, and Souls

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

October 01, 2022

Having the Faith of a Weed

In today's gospel reading from Luke, Jesus' disciples make a very simple request: "Increase our...

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 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 13, 2022

When Atheism Turns Evangelical

An evangelical Christian and an atheist got into an argument recently on this blog's Facebook...

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