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November 2023

November 24, 2023

How to Celebrate the Season Like a Real American

Today is Black Friday, the unfortunate beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Apparently in service...

October 2023

October 07, 2023

Your Faith is Not Just About You

The Ten Commandments from the book of Exodus is the lectionary reading from the Jewish...

September 2023

September 10, 2023

Is Tolerance the Most Important Virtue?

What happens when a perfectly good virtue gets turned into not only the most important virtue,...

August 2023

August 22, 2023

The Big Sister I Always Wanted: Remembering Marsue three years later

It doesn't seem possible that it has been exactly three years since Marsue Harris, one...

August 08, 2023

Dreamers Who Get Things Done

Your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. This, promises...

August 05, 2023

When What I Want to Believe Isn’t True: Reflections on the latest indictment of Donald Trump

What do you do when virtually all of the evidence relevant to an important matter...

July 2023

July 03, 2023

Sitting in Safety Without Fear–an Independence Day Reflection

Every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig-tree, and there shall...

June 2023

June 13, 2023

Walking Away from Jesusland

In our never-ending search for excellent police dramas, Jeanne and I watched the first season...

June 04, 2023

Good Times with the Trinity

It’s Trinity Sunday. Don’t worry, I’m not going to try to explain that very strange...

May 2023

May 29, 2023

What Does Christian Patriotism Look Like?

Memorial Day is a day for solemn remembrance. Memorial Day is also a day when...

May 09, 2023

Determined to Believe that We are Not Determined

In a recent edition of The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik reviews two or three books...

May 04, 2023

Various Ways of Saying “Hello” to God

You can either think of the creeds of the great traditions . . . as...

April 2023

April 30, 2023

A Bunch of Communists in the Book of Acts

I have been accused frequently over the years by commenters on my blog and on...

April 13, 2023

Jesus, Death, and Taxes

Thanks to the calendar, we get three extra days to file our taxes this year...

March 2023

March 21, 2023

When Stupidity Runs Amok . . .

In December of 1942, Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a Christmas letter to a number of his...

March 14, 2023

There is a God, But I Do Not Believe In Him

Starting thise week I am the up front person in both of my team-taught courses...

March 09, 2023

Whose Life Is it Anyway?

Albert Camus' classic extended essay "The Myth of Sisyphus" begins as follows: There is but...

February 2023

February 16, 2023

Balancing Humility with Expertise

As I continue early preparation for the book on the teaching life that I hope...

January 2023

January 26, 2023

Deciding Whom You Belong To

Five years ago, my college celebrated its centennial. For Jeanne and me, the highlight of...

January 24, 2023

We are to be God in the World

This coming Sunday's gospel reading is the Beatitudes from Matthew, the opening lines from the...

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 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 10, 2022

The Lady Macbeth School of Leadership

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

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 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...

September 2022

September 01, 2022

Abortion and Faith Discussions: Begin How You Want It To End

I wrote this essay while I was on retreat in early July but, for reasons...

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 25, 2022

Anniversary Week for “Freelance Christianity”: Here’s the #1 post in the past decade

This week marks the tenth anniversary of this blog--hard to believe! It has been on...

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