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Progressive Christian

2020-09-09T17:07:05-04:00

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.

There is No Substitute for the Real Thing

Last updated on: September 9, 2020 at 5:07 pm By Vance Morgan

Not long ago, I had the opportunity to return to one of my two favorite texts in the Hebrew scriptures—the Book of Job—with a dozen bright Honors students (the Book of Ruth is my other favorite). Job is a literary masterpiece, an exquisite and powerful dramatic treatment of the problem of innocent suffering and the larger problem of evil. I was pleased and encouraged to see that my seminar students found Job just as fascinating, confusing, and challenging as I... Read more

2020-09-09T17:06:55-04:00

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.

Silence: The Best Answer to Prayer

Last updated on: September 9, 2020 at 5:06 pm By Vance Morgan

I, as many people of faith, have often wondered why the divine is so apparently unavailable, so frequently silent. I, as many people of faith, have often assumed that this silence is my fault—especially since various people in my life since my youth have claimed that God speaks to them on a regular basis. The divine, in my experience, has always been elusive, showing itself just often enough in oblique and enigmatic ways to verify that the quarry I am... Read more

2020-09-06T12:24:01-04:00

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.

Living On the Edges of the Christian Circus Tent

Last updated on: September 6, 2020 at 12:24 pm By Vance Morgan

Jeanne and I celebrated our 32nd anniversary in July—the gifts we gave each other are reflective of a relationship that that has stood the test of time and in which the partners know each other very well. My gift from Jeanne was a power washer. It came at a perfect time, because we had just dropped a large amount of money on a new roof for the house a week or so earlier. There was nothing the house needed more... Read more

2020-09-05T21:12:14-04:00

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 it Truly Means to be Free

Last updated on: September 5, 2020 at 9:12 pm By Vance Morgan

Iris Murdoch is one of my favorite philosophers and novelists, but I seldom get to use her work in my teaching. Murdoch claimed to be an atheist, but she also believed that true moral commitment requires belief in something greater than ourselves, something transcendent not subject to the vagaries and whims of human existence. In the midst of exploring these matters in her philosophical essays and her novels, she crafted several memorable definitions of basic moral concepts. I wrote about... Read more

2020-09-02T13:01:01-04:00

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.

Love is the Discovery of Reality: A Story About Learning to See Things Differently

Last updated on: September 2, 2020 at 1:01 pm By Vance Morgan

Iris Murdoch was one of the philosophers whose work was front and center in my upper division course in contemporary philosophy a couple of semesters ago; last year was the centennial of her birth. She is a fascinating figure, an internationally respected philosopher who, at the height of her academic career, left academia to write novels full time. She ended up writing twenty-six of them, extraordinary investigations of the complexities and messiness of human relationships and commitments. Murdoch claimed to... Read more

2020-08-30T22:09:24-04:00

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 Sound Knowledgeable About Things that You Know Nothing About

Last updated on: August 30, 2020 at 10:09 pm By Vance Morgan

In 1980, famed science-fiction writer Isaac Asimov wrote the following in an opinion piece for Newsweek: There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that “my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge. Here we are, forty years after Asimov’s opinion piece, and his observation... Read more

2020-08-27T19:58:48-04:00

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.

So You Want to be a Blogger? Here are some things I’ve learned over the past nine years.

Last updated on: August 27, 2020 at 7:58 pm By Vance Morgan

Nine years ago today, I started this blog. The last three and a half of those years have been here on Patheos. During a sabbatical eleven years ago, I began writing in a personal, non-academic essay style that was a sharp break from the academic writing that I had been doing (because I had to) for twenty years. I liked writing in this new way, found it both therapeutic (in a spiritual practice sort of way) and stimulating, but had... Read more

2020-08-26T09:05:22-04:00

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.

Speaking the Truth in a Culture of Lies

Last updated on: August 26, 2020 at 9:05 am By Vance Morgan

Just short of a year ago, I spent a Saturday morning listening to a lecture by Joan Chittister. Her work and writing has been an inspiration for me over the past several years; I wrote the essay below about her lecture and more the day after I heard her in person. Her words hit me like an Old Testament prophet a year ago, and they are just as relevant today. Yesterday I had the privilege of attending a talk given... Read more

2020-08-24T15:03:20-04:00

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.

O God, Come to My Assistance

Last updated on: August 24, 2020 at 3:03 pm By Vance Morgan

Classes begin at my college next Monday, and the stress levels among the faculty (and everyone else) are high. Verklemptness is through the roof. On a faculty Facebook page, one helpful colleague posted that some of her friends on other campuses reported that when their classes started this past Monday, Zoom crashed. Zoom has become the lifeline and life raft for thousands (millions, perhaps) of teachers over the past few months—my own classes will not be able to run fully... Read more

2020-08-22T13:20:38-04:00

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.

The Connection between Faith and Politics? It’s a Secret

Last updated on: August 22, 2020 at 1:20 pm By Vance Morgan

Today’s reading from Matthew’s gospel is both famous and infamous. Jesus asks his disciples “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” My guess is that Jesus knows very well what people are saying about him; the ensuing conversation tells Jesus (and us) more about the disciples than Jesus’ reputation. As various disciples report what people are saying, in my imagination I go further to an expanded version: Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others... Read more

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