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Progressive Christian

2018-08-12T10:57:53-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Get Up, Kill, and Eat

Last updated on: August 12, 2018 at 10:57 am By Vance Morgan

I grew up in hunting country where at the appropriate times each year the males of the species took their preferred firearms and started shooting things. I remember my father returning from a day of hunting with a partridge or two or even a squirrel in his backpack (much to my mother’s consternation). Every third year or so he would hit the jackpot and get a deer, setting us up with meat for most of the upcoming winter. My older... Read more

2018-08-10T19:09:59-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Remember You are Dust

Last updated on: August 10, 2018 at 7:09 pm By Vance Morgan

I’ve been thinking about ashes lately. I just finished reading Sara Miles’s City of God, a memoir about taking ashes into the streets of the Mission district in San Francisco on Ash Wednesday (“Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return”). And we buried the ashes of a family member in the back yard last Wednesday. Bean, our Boston Terrier, died almost a year and a half ago; the small wooden box containing her ashes have been on the nightstand... Read more

2018-08-09T08:33:09-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I Didn’t Make This Stuff Up

Last updated on: August 9, 2018 at 8:33 am By Vance Morgan

During the three years that I lived in Milwaukee while completing my Ph.D. studies at Marquette University, I made some additional money beyond the pittance I earned as a teaching fellow by serving as the organist for Grace Presbyterian Church. I studied piano from age four, thought until my senior year in high school that I would be a concert pianist, realized that I would not be (I was good, but was not that good), then taught myself the organ... Read more

2018-08-03T14:29:50-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

To Live In Safety and Without Fear

Last updated on: August 3, 2018 at 2:29 pm By Vance Morgan

Every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig-tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. George Washington, Letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, RI This summer has been a summer of travel: Scotland, Denver, Minnesota, and Birmingham. Last summer, Jeanne and I organized our activities around using the Rhode Island Brewery Passport, taking advantage for the first time of the thirteen (and counting) microbreweries in our tiny Ocean State. The establishments are clumped together in... Read more

2018-08-06T21:00:52-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The Most Profoundly Religious Statement of All: “I Don’t Know”

Last updated on: August 6, 2018 at 9:00 pm By Vance Morgan

Let me tell you here first, “trust in God” has never floated my boat as a viable answer to religious questions. From a student notebook On the day after Christmas 2004, the third strongest earthquake ever measured, deep under the Indian Ocean, caused a tsunami that resulted in the deaths of close to 250,000 people. The vast majority of those who lost their lives were among the poorest people on the planet, the very people who are often most vulnerable to... Read more

2018-08-05T09:45:09-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Faith Without Creed

Last updated on: August 5, 2018 at 9:45 am By Vance Morgan

One Sunday, not too many months ago, I decided to pay close attention to the words of the Nicene Creed when it showed up as it does every Sunday morning in the Episcopal liturgy right after the homily. People usually pay about as much attention to the text of the Creed as they do to the words of the Lord’s Prayer—but try it sometime. “Wow,” I thought as I said the words, “there’s some pretty crazy stuff in here. I’m... Read more

2018-08-02T06:16:01-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The Whatevers

Last updated on: August 2, 2018 at 6:16 am By Vance Morgan

Although I regularly find myself immersed in things medieval with a bunch of freshmen every spring, I am not a medievalist. I must confess that I often find medieval literature, philosophy, theology, and just about everything else medieval largely boring, inscrutable, or both. Still, it’s hard to go wrong in the classroom studying Dante’s Inferno with eighteen-year-olds. Sin, violence, torture—what could be better? Is suicide worse than lying? Is adultery less problematic than treason? How do gluttony and simony compare? Does sloth... Read more

2018-07-31T07:06:32-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Magnetic Jesus

Last updated on: July 31, 2018 at 7:06 am By Vance Morgan

In one of the many recent books written by an atheist about Christianity (I forget which one), the author suggests that one should look with suspicion on any religion whose dominant and most recognizable symbol signifies violence, torture, and oppression. The importance of the cross to all Christians, regardless of their many important differences, is indeed worthy of attention. One of my early childhood memories involves waiting for a cross to arrive in the mail, selected from a list of... Read more

2018-07-30T16:48:48-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Like this God Stuff is Real

Last updated on: July 30, 2018 at 4:48 pm By Vance Morgan

In her wonderful memoir Take This Bread, Sara Miles tells us of a conversation she had with a fellow volunteer as they distributed food at their church’s food pantry one Friday morning. Both Sara and Steve were lay eucharistic ministers who brought the chalice to parishioners on Sunday morning; they noted the similarities between handing out food on Fridays and their activities at the altar on Sunday, including the importance of looking past the ritual and making eye contact with... Read more

Collegeville Institute

2018-07-28T09:32:38-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I Forgot What You Said

Last updated on: July 28, 2018 at 9:32 am By Vance Morgan

This morning I am in the middle of a writer’s conference hosted by an ecumenical institute on the campus of St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota, a place that over the past several years has become very meaningful to me as a place of peace, joy, and spiritual growth. As I sit in a lovely garden just across the way from the striking and looming presence of St. John’s Abbey, listening to its booming bells every quarter hour, I am... Read more

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