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Progressive Christian

2021-09-29T12:13:26-04:00

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.

God is a story, and so are we.

Last updated on: September 29, 2021 at 12:13 pm By Vance Morgan

The best argument in the world won’t change a person’s mind. The only thing that can do that is a good story. Richard Powers Richard Powers is one of my favorite novelists, perhaps the best living novelist that most people have either never heard of or haven’t read if they have heard of him. His latest novel, just out last week, is Bewilderment–I started it a couple of days ago. I’m not sure if I like it yet, but that’s not unusual... Read more

2021-10-01T09:13:22-04:00

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.

What is the best month, and why is it October?

Last updated on: October 1, 2021 at 9:13 am By Vance Morgan

Today is the first day of October, and that’s a very good thing. Autumn is my favorite season, and for any number of reasons, October is my favorite month. This goes well beyond the beauty of autumn in New England. Permit me to explain. October not only means my favorite kind of weather, but also puts me in a reminiscent mood. October was an important month during my growing up years because both my mother and my brother were born... Read more

2022-09-21T15:35:36-04:00

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.

Moral Certainty Is Both Overrated and Dangerous

Last updated on: September 21, 2022 at 3:35 pm By Vance Morgan

Do moral absolutes exist? Is human engagement with moral principles more like a treasure hunt, where we search for something that is already there but perhaps is deeply hidden, or are moral principles something that we creatively construct from various pieces of our individual and collective experiences as well as from the world around us? These are the sorts of questions that I always spend the first few weeks of any ethics course exploring with my students. On the first... Read more

2021-09-26T09:53:49-04:00

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.

Sometimes, it just doesn’t matter

Last updated on: September 26, 2021 at 9:53 am By Vance Morgan

One day, Jeanne said “I want a fish.” This was a rather random request, but Jeanne very seldom asks for anything, so within a few days we went to the pet store and purchased a Betta fish. Jeanne named him “Ezekiel” (more randomness), and he lived on the counter between our kitchen and dining room for well over a year. Google “Care of Betta fish” and you’ll get all sorts of conflicting advice concerning how often and what to feed... Read more

2021-09-19T12:49:30-04:00

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.

What if God exists, but isn’t very nice?

Last updated on: September 19, 2021 at 12:49 pm By Vance Morgan

Three weeks ago, I posted an essay that described a new course called “Faith and Doubt” that I will be teaching next spring with a Dominican priest colleague and friend from the Political Science department. I’m Faith and He’s Doubt In the interest of moving the ball forward, we are meeting each week for lunch to discuss and plan. One of my proposed texts is The Time of the Angels, one of Iris Murdoch’s many thought-provoking and disturbing novels from the... Read more

2021-09-20T17:24:44-04:00

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.

Is God More Like Ella Fitzgerald or Ludwig van Beethoven?

Last updated on: September 20, 2021 at 5:24 pm By Vance Morgan

Autumn officially begins this week, which is wonderful news. Autumn is by far my favorite season of the year. I have lived in New England for roughly 45 of my 65 years, so I know something about the wonders of the fall. I grew up in northern Vermont, surrounded by spectacular foliage colors every late September and crisp, jacket-wearing sunny days in October. Or so I remember it—given that Vermont reportedly has more cloudy days per year than any other... Read more

2022-10-17T16:26:29-04:00

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.

Is There Reason to be Optimistic? Seriously?

Last updated on: October 17, 2022 at 4:26 pm By Vance Morgan

In the interdisciplinary Honors course that I am team-teaching in this semester, we are smack in the middle of the 18th century. And that, among other things, means satire. I love satire and frequently use it in class to great effect, an effect heightened by the fact that the average nineteen-year-old can’t tell the difference between satire, irony, and a spreadsheet (even when they are in the Honors program). The texts for our seminars on Monday include Jonathan Swift’s “A... Read more

2021-09-14T14:57:42-04:00

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.

Is Ignorance Just as Good as Knowledge?

Last updated on: September 14, 2021 at 2:57 pm By Vance Morgan

A continuing theme of my various classes over the first three weeks of the semester has, not surprisingly, been the cognitive dissonance surrounding just about everything currently in this country. A seminar with eleven honors students on John Locke’s political thought included speculation about what Locke might want to say to anti-vaxxers, those who believe without evidence that the November 2020 presidential election was stolen, and the general attitude that if my side doesn’t win something nefarious and corrupt must... Read more

2021-09-13T17:02:31-04:00

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.

Is Happiness Overrated?

Last updated on: September 13, 2021 at 5:02 pm By Vance Morgan

It is the happy life that asks more of us than we realize we have and then surprises us by enabling it in us. Joan Chittister Is there any human state or condition more elusive, or more difficult to define, than happiness? Aristotle, my top candidate for the greatest philosopher in the Western tradition, famously wrote that every human being above all wants to be happy—they just disagree about the definition of the term. As our culture generally defines happiness, it... Read more

2021-09-08T13:40:48-04:00

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.

The Stories We Tell and the Lies We Believe

Last updated on: September 8, 2021 at 1:40 pm By Vance Morgan

As always, this past summer was a season of eclectic reading. I am team-teaching a course that I have not taught in a dozen years, so our syllabus several books that I’ve never read (yes, there are such things). One of them is Clint Smith’s new book How the Word Is Passed, whose subtitle is “A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America.” The historical bookends of our course are roughly the Enlightenment and the beginning of the twentieth... Read more

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