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Progressive Christian

2021-03-18T06:19:50-04:00

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 Great and Glorious Masterpiece

Last updated on: March 18, 2021 at 6:19 am By Vance Morgan

Over the years, a typical scenario has unfolded when I meet someone for the first time. “What do you do?” I am asked. “I’m a college professor.” “Oh wow! What do you teach?” “Philosophy.” At that point, one of three things happens: “Say something philosophical,” my new acquaintance demands. I generally say something like “When a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, there isn’t any sound (pause), except for the times that there is.” That’s usually... Read more

2021-03-16T08:45:27-04:00

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.

Tomorrow is St. Patrick’s Day. Big Deal.

Last updated on: March 16, 2021 at 8:45 am By Vance Morgan

A couple of years ago, in the misty past of pre-Covid restrictions, I had a brief locker room conversation with a campus security guard who frequently tortured himself at the gym around the same time that I did. He noted how much he was dreading Saint Patrick’s Day the next day. “I’ll be here dealing with drunk students for twelve hours,” he predicted. “It’s always the worst day of the year; on a Friday, it’s going to be especially bad”... Read more

2021-03-10T14:04:04-04:00

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.

Returning to the Basics

Last updated on: March 10, 2021 at 2:04 pm By Vance Morgan

Today’s lectionary texts take us back to the basics. Sports fans old enough to remember the 70s and 80s will recall that a regular occurrence at baseball or football games either in person or on television was, when the camera panned the stands, to see a person—often wearing a colorful fright wig—holding up a large homemade poster board sign with a cryptic reference that made sense only for initiates: John 3:16. I often imagined the confusion that many might have felt... Read more

2021-03-13T10:28:43-04:00

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.

I Like Time Changes! So sue me.

Last updated on: March 13, 2021 at 10:28 am By Vance Morgan

For many of us, Daylight Saving Time begins tomorrow at 2:00 am. That’s “spring forward,” people! I’m going to go out on a limb and embrace the controversy that I know is to come: I like time changes. I like changing to standard time in the late fall, with nightfall earlier each day as we inch toward the winter solstice. I like that. I like falling back (and the extra hour of sleep once a year) and also, for entirely different reasons,... Read more

2021-03-10T18:34:09-04:00

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.

Jesus Didn’t Care About Family Values

Last updated on: March 10, 2021 at 6:34 pm By Vance Morgan

I was angry with my father for a lot of reasons over the years, some justified and some not. But I don’t recall any time when I was more pissed at him than when I heard him say on one of his cassette-taped “fireside chats” aimed at his followers and groupies that “a person’s real family is almost never his blood family.” Thanks a lot, Dad—signed, “One of your blood family.” I heard this a few short months after my mother... Read more

2021-03-08T22:25:07-04:00

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.

#SayThisNotThat

Last updated on: March 8, 2021 at 10:25 pm By Vance Morgan

To clarify thought, to discredit the intrinsically meaningless words, and to define the use of others by precise analysis—to do this, strange though it many appear, might be a way of saving human lives. Simone Weil The above passage comes from Simone Weil’s essay “The Power of Words,” written in the late 1930s as Nazi forces, ideology, and propaganda swept across Europe. Weil’s concern in the essay is to push back against the insidious ways in which language can be... Read more

2021-03-06T18:24:53-04:00

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.

Ah Yes, I Remember It Well . . . or do I?

Last updated on: March 6, 2021 at 6:24 pm By Vance Morgan

My youngest son, Justin, has a remarkable memory–for, as he puts it, “totally useless facts.” By the time he was ten or eleven, I had learned never to challenge his memory of a basketball game we attended, of a conversation from months or years earlier, or a movie. Thanks to me and my forcing Justin and his brother Caleb to watch my favorite movies from the time they were very young, Justin knows every line of dialogue from “Dead Poets... Read more

2021-03-05T11:27:20-04:00

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.

Today’s my Birthday–and it’s a big one!

Last updated on: March 5, 2021 at 11:27 am By Vance Morgan

I’ve lived almost two-thirds of a century now, so I have passed many of the birthdays that supposedly mark a passage and/or cause the birthday person distress. 18, 21, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60 . . . you know what I’m talking about. It has never been a big deal for me—as Jeanne always says, “It’s just a number.” But I’m 65 today . . . and that particular number has caught my attention. “65!!” I’ve been thinking over the... Read more

2021-03-03T06:41:32-04:00

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.

Praying with Alexa

Last updated on: March 3, 2021 at 6:41 am By Vance Morgan

I read a fascinating article in The Atlantic not long ago that explores the various ways in which virtual assistants such as Alexa and Siri have begun to occupy more and more important spaces in our lives. Alexa has lived in our house for the last eighteen months or so. I was worried at first, because home is the one place where my conversation tends to be unfiltered. I talk to our dachshund Winnie as if she is a person (actually,... Read more

2021-03-02T10:24:59-04:00

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.

Hitler, Trump, and the Golden Calf

Last updated on: March 2, 2021 at 10:24 am By Vance Morgan

In one of my seminars a week or so ago, my students and I considered the following passage from a text assigned for the day. [He] had seen nothing of the world and had acquired neither knowledge nor understanding of it . . . [He] preferred to have people of the same origins as himself in his immediate entourage; no doubt he felt most at ease among them . . . His illusions and wish-dreams were a direct outgrowth of... Read more

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