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Progressive Christian

2023-02-28T13:30:46-04:00

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.

When I’m Sixty-Four

Last updated on: February 28, 2023 at 1:30 pm By Vance Morgan

“Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I’m sixty-four?” Paul McCartney, The Beatles Today is my sixty-fourth birthday! I ask my family, friends, followers, and readers to indulge me as I meander through a few matters on the way to trying to identify some things that I think I’ve learned in almost three-and-a-half decades. A few weeks ago, in my “Apocalypse” colloquium, my teaching partner and I gave the students an assignment called the “Civilization Archive”:... Read more

2020-03-02T21:06:44-04:00

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.

God Is Doing the Best that God Can Do

Last updated on: March 2, 2020 at 9:06 pm By Vance Morgan

Frank Tupper, an important Baptist theologian who argued that God is in control of very little in our world, died a few days ago. According to an online eulogy and summary of his life, the thesis for Tupper’s writing, theology, and life was that “In every specific historical context with its possibilities and limitations, God always does the most God can do.” As a response to the problem of evil, to pervasive questions about why a good and omnipotent God... Read more

2020-02-29T21:32:19-04:00

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 I Know . . . But Who are You?

Last updated on: February 29, 2020 at 9:32 pm By Vance Morgan

Today is the First Sunday of Lent; the gospel traditionally is a version of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. The devil . . . temptation . . . the problem of evil . . . these are all matters I’ve been concerned, even obsessed, with since I was very young. While on sabbatical a decade ago at the Collegeville Institute, a fellow resident scholar and friend died unexpectedly. Conrad was a lovely, gentle man whom I had only known for... Read more

Collegeville Institute

2020-02-27T07:13:59-04:00

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.

What I Learned When I Visited Cuba

Last updated on: February 27, 2020 at 7:13 am By Vance Morgan

Cuba and Fidel Castro are in the news, as Bernie Sanders seeks to explain why he thinks that it was a good thing that one of the results of the Cuban revolution was that Cuban citizens became among the most literate citizens in the world. Seventeen years ago, I was part of a group of a dozen or so academics who visited Cuba for a week on a fact-finding trip related to their health care system. I returned from this... Read more

2020-02-25T12:38:21-04:00

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.

A Lenten Reflection: The Difference Between Solitude and Being Alone

Last updated on: February 25, 2020 at 12:38 pm By Vance Morgan

The greatest thing in the world is to know how to belong to yourself. Michel de Montaigne As part of the liturgical year, I freely confess that Lent is my least favorite season. Over the past several years I have regularly posted something like “Why Lent is a Bad Idea” on this blog around Ash Wednesday. I have struggled not so much with the season, but rather with what Lent seems to represent for many people. It often is little... Read more

2020-02-21T12:24:28-04:00

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.

A Lesson from Transfiguration Sunday: Stop, Look, and Listen–but don’t touch

Last updated on: February 21, 2020 at 12:24 pm By Vance Morgan

Today is the last Sunday before Lent, a Sunday which, in the liturgical calendar, is always Transfiguration Sunday. Included in all three of the synoptic gospels, Jesus’ transfiguration is a strange story multiple layers of possible meaning. Jesus is worn out by the crowds and takes his best buddies, Peter, James, and John, with him to the top of a mountain for a break. While there, he is transfigured with Elijah and Moses, looking like a great laundry detergent ad. Matthew’... Read more

2020-02-20T07:37:26-04:00

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.

Professional Wrestling and the Liberal Agenda

Last updated on: February 20, 2020 at 7:37 am By Vance Morgan

My tattoo-artist oldest son reported in a phone conversation the other day that one of his recent clients is involved with professional wrestling. This brought me back more than thirty years when my sons were little kids . . . One of my many fond memories of my sons’ youth was our early Saturday morning routine. Their mother worked the night shift at a nursing home; I would wake the boys up around 6:00 and throw them in the car... Read more

2020-02-17T15:30:23-04:00

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.

When an Important Memory Turns Out to be Wrong

Last updated on: February 17, 2020 at 3:30 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

2020-02-15T18:29:03-04:00

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 Prophet Isaiah Goes to the National Prayer Breakfast

Last updated on: February 15, 2020 at 6:29 pm By Vance Morgan

I was the scheduled lector at the 8:00 service last Sunday, the first time I got to read up front in a couple of months. After the Psalm, the reading for the day was from Isaiah 58. The opening lines were SHOUT OUT, DO NOT HOLD BACK! LIFT UP YOUR VOICE LIKE A TRUMPET! Which I did, sort of—as much as I dared to in church at 8:10 in the morning. As I continued through Isaiah’s “in your face” challenge... Read more

2020-02-12T23:21:26-04:00

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.

“Custodians of each other’s well-being”–A Reflection for Valentine’s Week

Last updated on: February 12, 2020 at 11:21 pm By Vance Morgan

Human love in the purest forms we can know it, wife and husband, parent and child, has the aura and the immutability of the sacred. Marilynne Robinson Occasionally on an early Sunday morning, Jeanne and listen to Krista Tippett’s “On Being” on our local NPR station. Appropriately for Valentine’s week a couple of years ago, Krista interviewed philosopher and author Alain de Botton–the topic was “The True Hard Work of Love and Relationships.” On Being: The True Hard Work of Love... Read more

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