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Progressive Christian

2022-02-09T14:43:16-04:00

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.

No One Cares if You are Comfortable or Not

Last updated on: February 9, 2022 at 2:43 pm By Vance Morgan

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace. Baruch Spinoza My teaching colleagues and I were happy to hear a few days ago that Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus was recently banned by Tennessee’s McMinn County school board from its curriculum. Serialized from 1980-91, Maus won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for literature. When choosing the texts last fall for our team-taught course this semester, an interdisciplinary exploration of the twentieth century through literature,... Read more

2022-02-06T18:46:15-04:00

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.

Playing With Fire: Be Careful What You Say “Yes” To

Last updated on: February 6, 2022 at 6:46 pm By Vance Morgan

Somewhere not long ago I heard or read that one of the top television programs in Finland (or Sweden or Norway) is a few hours of watching a fire burn in a fireplace. I don’t know whether or not this is true—I would hope that my Scandinavian cousins might go for a real fire in a fireplace rather than one on a screen. But Google “fireplace youtube video” and you will find several dozen to choose from. During the two-hour... Read more

2022-02-05T16:10:55-04:00

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.

Dear Persons of Faith: Stop Trying to Prove that God Exists

Last updated on: February 5, 2022 at 4:10 pm By Vance Morgan

In Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel Gilead, Reverend John Ames (one of my top five favorite characters in all of fiction) frequently expresses doubt concerning his faith, something unexpected in a Congregational minister, at least in some circles. In the middle of the novel, Ames spends a few pages considering doubt and uncertainty in one’s faith within the context of challenges from non-believers to “prove” that God exists. Concerning such challenges, Ames reflects that I must have told them... Read more

2022-01-29T16:21:21-04:00

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.

Revisiting the Garden of Eden

Last updated on: January 29, 2022 at 4:21 pm By Vance Morgan

I am not overstating the case when I say that I was raised on original sin. I wrote about this in a post a few days ago, but it is worth mentioning again, simply because I feel now, close to the end of my 65th year, that the grip of this pernicious doctrine has largely lost its power over me. There are many reasons for this positive development, not the least being that I have learned the power of unconditional... Read more

2022-01-31T10:37:30-04:00

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.

My Mistress and Me

Last updated on: January 31, 2022 at 10:37 am By Vance Morgan

At the beginning of the first seminar in my “Faith and Doubt” colloquium, I asked the fifteen students seated around the table why, when they had more than thirty colloquia to choose from, they had registered for this particular colloquium that meets at 8:30 in the morning twice per week for two hours per session. Their answers were both illuminating and encouraging. My personal favorite came from a student who explained that he signed up for this colloquium because, a... Read more

2022-01-29T12:52:21-04:00

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.

Decorating the Dungeon

Last updated on: January 29, 2022 at 12:52 pm By Vance Morgan

I am currently rereading Virginia Woolf’s 1925 novel Mrs. Dalloway for one of my team-taught courses where it will be the central seminar text in a couple of weeks. I haven’t read or taught it in a dozen years, so it’s as if I’m reading it for the first time. This course is an interdisciplinary exploration of the history, literature, theology, philosophy, and art of the twentieth century—Mrs. Dalloway introduces a number of themes that will be central in many... Read more

2022-01-26T18:50:49-04:00

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.

Raised on Original Sin

Last updated on: January 26, 2022 at 6:50 pm By Vance Morgan

It hardly seems possible that I am now in the tenth calendar year of writing this blog (my first post was at the end of August 2012). It seems even less possible that it was fifteen years ago that I first began experimenting with writing short essays, the type of writing that eventually produced and continues to sustain this blog, as well as two books that have grown out of such essays. I applied to the 2007 Southampton Writers’ Conference... Read more

2022-01-24T14:43:45-04:00

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 Jesus was Obsessed with Outsiders

Last updated on: January 24, 2022 at 2:43 pm By Vance Morgan

The first text in the new “Faith and Doubt” colloquium that I am team-teaching this semester was Anne Lamott’s Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith. Plan B is a sequel to Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith; I remember clearly when, a number of years ago, I picked up Traveling Mercies from a table of new paperbacks in Borders (back when Borders still existed). I’m always drawn to any book outside the Religion, Theology, Spirituality, or New Age section of... Read more

2022-01-24T14:42:44-04:00

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 Words of Our Mouths and the Meditation of Our Hearts

Last updated on: January 24, 2022 at 2:42 pm By Vance Morgan

This past week I began a new course with a colleague from the Political Science department who is also a Dominican priest. We began our “Faith and Doubt” colloquium with Anne Lamott’s Plan B as we are seeking from the start to provide our students with a less traditional, less mysterious, and more serviceable orientation to “faith,” one that will be developed and stretched to its limit over the semester. Lamott’s observation that “the opposite of faith is not doubt,... Read more

2022-01-20T23:45:47-04:00

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.

The (White) Privilege of “Blending In”

Last updated on: January 20, 2022 at 11:45 pm By Vance Morgan

Roughly a month after the 1/6 insurrection last year, at a House of Representatives event organized by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to provide members of Congress to share their experiences of the January 6th mob occupation of the Capitol, Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN) closed his comments as follows: I close with an invitation – a hopeful invitation – to everyone watching or listening, whether you experienced January 6th in this room, whether you were barricaded in an office across the... Read more

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