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Progressive Christian

2022-03-02T13:07:47-04:00

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.

What if Jesus Turned the Stones into Bread?

Last updated on: March 2, 2022 at 1:07 pm By Vance Morgan

The Gospel reading in this coming Sunday’s lectionary for the first Sunday of Lent is Luke’s account of Jesus’ forty days of temptation in the wilderness. This story happens also to be the centerpiece of one of the great passages in all of literature, Dostoevsky’s tale of the Grand Inquisitor in The Brothers Karamazov. As chance would have it, my teaching colleague and I just spent a seminar with our sophomore “Faith and Doubt” students on Dostoevsky’s story just a... Read more

2022-03-01T07:29:26-04:00

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.

An Assignment for Lent: Learn the Difference Between Solitude and Being Alone

Last updated on: March 1, 2022 at 7:29 am By Vance Morgan

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to yourself. Michel de Montaigne Tommorow is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. Whoopee. I freely confess that Lent is my least favorite season of the liturgical year. Over the past several years I have regularly posted something like “Why Lent is a Bad Idea” on this blog around Ash Wednesday. I have struggled not so much with the season, but rather with what Lent seems to... Read more

2022-02-23T06:03:32-04:00

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.

Stop, Look, and Listen: A Transfiguration Sunday Reflection

Last updated on: February 23, 2022 at 6:03 am By Vance Morgan

Today is Transfiguration Sunday, the last Sunday before Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. Included in all three of the synoptic gospels (it’s Luke’s version this year), Jesus’ transfiguration is a strange story with multiple layers of possible meaning. Jesus is worn out by the crowds and takes his best buddies, Peter, James, and John, with him to the top of a mountain for a break. While there, he is transfigured with Elijah and Moses, looking like a great... Read more

Development of Western Civilization

2022-02-23T10:39:29-04:00

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 Cruelest Thing a Person Can Say

Last updated on: February 23, 2022 at 10:39 am By Vance Morgan

I detect that a rebellion against all things “religious” is growing on me. Often it amounts to an instinctive horror. Dietrich Bonhoeffer The assigned texts in my “Faith and Doubt” colloquium seminar this morning are the Grand Inquisitor materials from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov and Confession, Leo Tolstoy’s poignant and brutally honest account of his journey toward faith. I’ve led class discussions on the Dostoevsky materials several times over the years, but this is my first time with Confessions. There are many passages... Read more

2022-02-19T15:41:26-04:00

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.

Faith and Insecurity

Last updated on: February 19, 2022 at 3:41 pm By Vance Morgan

Have you never felt like one of those pawns forgotten in a corner of the board, with the sounds of battle fading behind them? They try to stand straight but wonder if they still have a king to serve. Arturo Pérez-Reverte On tap this coming week in my team-taught “Faith and Doubt” colloquium is the Grand Inquisitor materials from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s brilliant final novel, The Brothers Karamazov. As I have been reviewing these materials last week, I was reminded of one... Read more

2022-02-19T22:15:53-04:00

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.

Faithful Failures–A Presidents’ Day Reflection

Last updated on: February 19, 2022 at 10:15 pm By Vance Morgan

It’s Presidents’ Day weekend, which for college professors means–as do all Monday holidays in the middle of the semester–“catch up day.” It’s the Spring semester’s version of Indigenous Peoples’ Day. I will be spending most of the day catching up on the grading that never seems to end, particularly since I have this nasty habit of assigning my students a lot of writing assignments. But it’s also a time to think about Presidents as well as social policy and politics.... Read more

2022-02-17T18:29:38-04:00

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.

Everything Changes, Including Us. Get Used To It.

Last updated on: February 17, 2022 at 6:29 pm By Vance Morgan

All that you touch, you Change. All that you Change, Changes you. The only lasting truth Is Change. God Is Change When Jeanne and I learned via early morning email a couple of Sundays ago that our good friend Mitch, the priest-in-charge for the past seven years at Trinity Episcopal Church where we attend, would be leaving Trinity at the end of the month to take a new assignment at another parish, we were not happy. Mitch announced that he... Read more

2022-02-16T07:30:06-04:00

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.

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

Last updated on: February 16, 2022 at 7:30 am By Vance Morgan

We are all patchwork, and so shapeless and diverse in composition that each bit, each moment, plays its own game. And there is as much difference between us and ourselves as between us and others. Michel de Montaigne, Essais I regularly tell my students that after more than thirty years of studying and teaching philosophy, I am convinced that the most interesting philosophical subject is a close to home as possible. The most fascinating philosophical topic is us. As the... Read more

2022-02-07T12:03:15-04:00

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.

On Valentine’s Day, in Praise of Beautiful Souls

Last updated on: February 7, 2022 at 12:03 pm By Vance Morgan

What makes a human being beautiful? What is it that we love when we love someone? These are appropriate questions for Valentine’s Day, questions that Marilynne Robinson explores in her 2020 novel Jack through a very unlikely romance. Both Jack and Della are preacher’s kids, but there the similarity ends. Jack is a classic “black sheep of the family,” with years of wandering and vagrancy, as well as a few years in prison, in his past. Della is a grade... Read more

2023-01-22T18:46:22-04:00

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 God in the World

Last updated on: January 22, 2023 at 6:46 pm By Vance Morgan

Today’s gospel reading is Luke’s abbreviated version of the Beatitudes. It is a scene so familiar in our imaginations that it has become iconic. In films, on television, the subject of countless artistic renditions, we are transported back two thousand years. It is a beautiful, cloudless day. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people have gathered in the countryside from miles around; some have walked for hours. The second season of The Chosen builds up to the Sermon on the Mount, a... Read more

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