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Progressive Christian

2021-12-08T13:18:06-04:00

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.

A Cosmic Homecoming

Last updated on: December 8, 2021 at 1:18 pm By Vance Morgan

Baptist preacher’s kids get to do some very odd things. I memorized large portions of the Bible under duress, including–as a dutiful five-year-old–the names of the books of the Old Testament minor prophets to an obnoxious sing-songy tune. I could run through all of them in one breath—Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi. These obscure texts were written in a ancient time for a distant people in contexts and for reasons known only to the... Read more

2021-12-07T07:32:44-04:00

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.

“On Earth as it is in Heaven”: Living the Social Gospel

Last updated on: December 7, 2021 at 7:32 am By Vance Morgan

At the end of the first of two semesters in the interdisiplinary and team-taught honors course I am teaching in this academic year, we are considering important events, movements, and texts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The topic for seminar yesterday was broad, including Social Darwinism, workers movements, and Christian responses to social upheaval. Along with essays from Herbert Spencer and Andrew Carnegie, the students read Pope Leo XIII’s influential 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum. The final text... Read more

2021-11-24T14:29:28-04:00

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.

Our Reason to Hope

Last updated on: November 24, 2021 at 2:29 pm By Vance Morgan

Jeanne got on the Amtrak early one Sunday morning not that long ago, beginning two weeks of work-related travel. Bummed out, I decided to head south for church an hour and a half early in order to spend that extra time in the coffee shop just down the street, reading and doing my introverted thing. My text for the morning was Herodotus’s Histories, the reading assignment for the coming week’s Development of Western Civilization freshman seminars. Herodotus is considered to... Read more

2021-12-01T21:03:23-04:00

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.

Saint Andrew, Bagpipes, and Cats

Last updated on: December 1, 2021 at 9:03 pm By Vance Morgan

November 30 was Saint Andrew’s Day. Even though I am two days late, I offer the following in honor of the patron saint of Scotland (the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen) and my dear friend Marsue, who loved bagpipes. I miss you a lot, Marsue. Although I am a philosophy professor by trade, I believe William Shakespeare’s body of work is more insightful about my favorite philosophical topic—human beings—than anything the Western tradition in philosophy has to offer. The... Read more

2021-11-24T11:49:30-04:00

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.

Advent and the Gift of Being Human

Last updated on: November 24, 2021 at 11:49 am By Vance Morgan

In Philosophical Fragments, 19th-century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard tells a lovely story about a powerful king who falls in love with a lowly maiden. The maiden is unaware of the king’s love, and the king is worried. Knowing that love is built on equality, how is the gap between his royal greatness and her humble maidenhood to be crossed? He does not want to coerce her into loving him by revealing his love in all of its splendor, nor would elevating her... Read more

2021-11-27T22:58:01-04:00

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.

What Advent is Saying to Us: Stay Awake!

Last updated on: November 27, 2021 at 10:58 pm By Vance Morgan

Today is the first day of the new Christian liturgical year–the First Sunday of Advent. Last year I had the privilege of giving the sermon on liturgical New Year’s Day at Trinity Episcopal Church in Pawtuxet, RI. Here’s what I said. Happy New Year! Today is the First Sunday of Advent, the first day of the new liturgical year. That’s Year One in the Book of Common Prayer daily readings, and Year B for the Sunday and Feast Day Lectionary... Read more

2021-11-26T08:12:13-04:00

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.

How to Celebrate Christmas Like a Real American

Last updated on: November 26, 2021 at 8:12 am By Vance Morgan

Today is Black Friday, the unfortunate beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Apparently in service to the holiday spirit of capitalism, some stores opened in yesterday’s evening hours, forcing their employees to interrupt their Thanksgivings in pursuit of increased sales. It is also the beginning of this year’s skirmish in the much-hyped “War on Christmas.” This is a “war” allegedly being waged by all sorts of non-Christians in this country, a war whose continuing battlefields include the apparent prohibition against... Read more

2021-11-22T22:22:02-04:00

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 are YOU Thankful for this Thanksgiving Week?

Last updated on: November 22, 2021 at 10:22 pm By Vance Morgan

I have a Facebook acquaintance, a fellow graduate of St. John’s College, who posts five things she is thankful for every morning. I admire this and am always glad when I bump into her daily post on those mornings that I’m on Facebook as well. It is a practice that I have told myself many times that I need to develop, but have so far have failed to do. But as we approach the best holiday of the year, let... Read more

2021-11-20T09:14:09-04:00

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.

Mansplaining in the Bible, and a Woman Who Overcame It

Last updated on: November 20, 2021 at 9:14 am By Vance Morgan

At a recent department meeting, our department chair wondered whether it might be good for building department chemistry to have various events in which we share teaching tricks of the trade with each other. “After all,” he said, “two of our faculty have won the Accinno award!” The Accinno award is my college’s “Teacher of the Year” award, which I won fifteen years ago in just the third year of its existence. The departmental colleague who won the same award... Read more

Development of Western Civilization

2021-11-17T15:01:56-04:00

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.

Teachers, Guns, and Sacred Spaces

Last updated on: November 17, 2021 at 3:01 pm By Vance Morgan

Today in my ethics classes we will begin our final unit of the semester: Gun violence. First up is an essay by Simone Gubler called “Philosophizing with Guns.” She wrote it while she was a doctoral student in philosophy at the University of Texas, reflecting on a Texas “campus carry” bill signed into law a few months earlier that specifies libraries, offices, and classrooms on campus as “concealed carry zones”-areas in which people with concelaled handgun licenses may carry their... Read more

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