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Progressive Christian

2025-05-14T10:57:30-04:00

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.

Why Faith Needs Doubt: A Lesson from Exams and a Pope

Last updated on: May 14, 2025 at 10:57 am By Vance Morgan

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Oral Exams and Conclaves Last week was final exam week–I administered 32 written exams and held 34 oral exams (25-30 minutes each) in my office. I greatly prefer oral to written exams and would love for all exams in my courses to be oral. But one week doesn’t provide enough time for that, so I made oral exams optional in two of my three courses. Oral exams tend to run together when you have seven or eight of them per... Read more

2025-05-12T11:44:23-04:00

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.

We Are Waterproof: Finding Faith in the Life of Sheep

Last updated on: May 12, 2025 at 11:44 am By Vance Morgan

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An Ovine Faith One of my prized possessions, purchased when Jeanne and I were on vacation during the Summer of 2018 in Scotland, is a Harris Tweed wool cap. I bought it in a small shop in Oban, a beautiful port on the west coast of Scotland that is the gateway to the Hebrides islands (where they make Islay scotch whisky, the real reason we went to Scotland in the first place). I wear this cap to work frequently, and... Read more

2025-05-05T10:54:08-04:00

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.

Finding Hope on the Road to Emmaus

Last updated on: May 5, 2025 at 10:54 am By Vance Morgan

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One of the downsides of the liturgical calendar is that, since it runs in a three year cycle (A, B, and C), some of my favorite gospel stories only show up in the Sunday lectionary once every three years. Today is no exception. The Year C Third Sunday of Easter gospel reading from John is an important one, with Jesus performing a post-resurrection miracle and having an important conversation with Peter. But the Year A Third Sunday after Easter gospel... Read more

2025-05-19T13:45:28-04:00

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.

An Ambivalent Faith: Finding Meaning in Uncertainty

Last updated on: May 19, 2025 at 1:45 pm By Vance Morgan

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I tend to have a difficult time falling and/or staying asleep at night when Jeanne is away. She’s been away the past week for work—I’ve found that sometimes playing a podcast on relatively low volume on my phone often puts me to sleep within ten minutes. My phone automatically shifts to an unplayed episode of either the same podcast or one of the other twenty or so podcasts I have bookmarked and listen to semi-regularly. I usually partially wake up... Read more

General Christian

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2025-04-30T11:48:35-04:00

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.

Being a Philosopher and a Christian

Last updated on: April 30, 2025 at 11:48 am By Vance Morgan

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There may be no need to reconcile all one’s beliefs with all one’s other beliefs—no need to attempt to see reality steadily and as a whole. Perhaps our beliefs can be compartmentalized, so that there is no need, for example, to reconcile one’s regular attendance at Mass with one’s work as an evolutionary biologist. Richard Rorty This passage was part of the final essay that my American Philosophy students and I considered in our final class of the semester yesterday.... Read more

2025-04-29T15:43:26-04:00

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.

Did the Early Christians Practice Socialism?

Last updated on: April 29, 2025 at 3:43 pm By Vance Morgan

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Doubt is Next to Godliness Last Friday’s post imagined a conversation between Karl Marx and Jesus in which they discuss a passage or two from Richard Rorty’s essay “Failed Prophecies, Glorious Hope,” an essay that just happened to be the focus of class discussion in my American Philosophy class last week. Why “Christian Socialism” is not an oxymoron One of Rorty’s many interesting and controversial claims in that essay is that “We should read [The Communist Manifesto and the... Read more

General Christian

History and Religion

Politics and Religion

2025-04-22T17:07:33-04:00

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.

Why “Christian Socialism” is not an oxymoron

Last updated on: April 22, 2025 at 5:07 pm By Vance Morgan

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We should read the New Testament as saying that how we treat each other on earth matters a great deal more than the outcome of debate concerning the existence or nature of another world. Richard Rorty, “Failed Prophecies, Glorious Hopes” One of the final texts we will be studying in my American Philosophy course that finishes next week is by Richard Rorty, an influential American pragmatist philosopher from the late twentieth- and early twenty-first century. In his essay “Failed Prophecies,... Read more

2025-04-21T12:48:42-04:00

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.

Non-Catholic Thoughts about Pope Francis I

Last updated on: April 21, 2025 at 12:48 pm By Vance Morgan

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I was, as were billions of other people, saddened to hear the news of Pope Francis I’s passing yesterday. As a non-Catholic who has taught in Catholic higher education for thirty-five years and who has dozens of Catholic colleagues and friends, I’ve always paid closeattention to this Argentinian Jesuit who seemed to be very different from the string of popes since John XXIII who was pope when I was born. According to the search engine on my blog platform, Francis... Read more

2025-04-17T14:48:57-04:00

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.

Easter–Now It Begins

Last updated on: April 17, 2025 at 2:48 pm By Vance Morgan

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Easter is the celebration of the promise of hope, the promise of new life, that surely after darkness there is light, and that within the deepest betrayals lie the possibilities of forgiveness. Yet as Barbara Johnson writes, “[W]e are Easter people living in a Good Friday world,” a world that provides more Good Friday moments on a daily basis. Eventually the joy of Easter and what follows in its wake fades. What then? The lectionary texts for Easter Sunday and... Read more

2025-04-13T19:16:53-04:00

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.

Holy Saturday: “Mortals die, and are laid low”

Last updated on: April 13, 2025 at 7:16 pm By Vance Morgan

Holy Saturday reminds us that we are mortal and that we all will die. Quoting the Book of Job, the Holy Saturday liturgy reminds us that [m]ortals die, and are laid low . . . As waters fail from a lake, and a river wastes away and dries up, so mortals lie down and do not rise again; until the heavens are no more, they will not awake or be roused out of their sleep. Those who loved and followed... Read more

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