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Progressive Christian

Iris Murdoch

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April 2026

April 05, 2026

Now My Eyes Have Seen You: An Easter Reflection

Easter Sunday--the most triumphant day on the Christian liturgical calendar. According to New Testament scholar...

July 2025

July 13, 2025

The Good Samaritan and Humility

The Proper 10 Year C gospel from Luke is one of Jesus’s most beloved parables....

January 2025

January 07, 2025

My Word for 2025

Anne Lamott tells the story of an older woman who, along with other active geriatric...

September 2024

September 22, 2024

The Wisdom of Trees

In Psalm 1, one of the psalm options in today's lectionary readings, the righteous are...

June 2024

June 16, 2024

The Good Samaritan

Today is the Fifth Sunday after Easter in the lectionary, including a number of familiar...

May 2024

May 14, 2024

Perfection or Slight Improvement?

As I begin work on the final version of my forthcoming book A Year of...

September 2023

September 26, 2023

Consider the Salmon: Like Souls Approaching God

Jeanne and I spent a couple of lovely days last week with friends in Port...

March 2023

March 14, 2023

There is a God, But I Do Not Believe In Him

Starting thise week I am the up front person in both of my team-taught courses...

January 2023

January 28, 2023

An Epiphany Worthy of the Season

I have heard of you with my ears, but now my eyes have seen you. The...

January 19, 2023

Be Like a Tree

There are two kinds of living things. They are distinguished by the strategies they have...

January 07, 2023

Jesus and John Gather at the River

The season of Epiphany, squeezed in between the Christmas season and Lent, is the annual...

July 2022

July 11, 2022

My Neighbor May Not Be the Person I Think It Is

I recently found myself in the midst of a Facebook discussion, the sort of online...

June 2022

June 21, 2022

So You Want to be Free? Face your Demons

Iris Murdoch is one of my favorite philosophers and novelists, a writer whose work is...

May 2022

May 10, 2022

Saying Something Profound

Regular classes for the spring semester ended last Friday--semesters seem to go by more quickly...

March 2022

March 15, 2022

The God Who is With Us and Forsakes Us

This week in my "Faith and Doubt" seminar we are encountering Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of...

March 06, 2022

It’s My 66th Birthday, and I’m Still Here. Deal with it.

Early last week a friend emailed me the following comment in response to my latest...

January 2022

January 27, 2022

Raised on Original Sin

It hardly seems possible that I am now in the tenth calendar year of writing...

January 04, 2022

Getting Atheists and Theists on the Same Page

One of the texts that I regularly use in my ethics classes is a collection...

September 2021

September 23, 2021

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

Three weeks ago, I posted an essay that described a new course called "Faith and...

August 2021

August 17, 2021

I’m Working On It

Any caring human being asks the question What is the right thing to do? on...

March 2021

March 06, 2021

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

I’ve lived almost two-thirds of a century now, so I have passed many of the...

September 2020

September 06, 2020

What it Truly Means to be Free

Iris Murdoch is one of my favorite philosophers and novelists, but I seldom get to...

September 03, 2020

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

Iris Murdoch was one of the philosophers whose work was front and center in my...

May 2020

May 26, 2020

Why Are You Such a Person?

I recently finished reading Hilary Mantel’s long-awaited The Mirror and the Light, the final entry...

March 2020

March 16, 2020

Managing Our Lives Without God

God would have us know that we must live as people who manage our lives...

March 05, 2020

When I’m Sixty-Four

"Will you still need me, will you still feed me, when I'm sixty-four?" Paul McCartney,...

January 2020

January 12, 2020

What Really Happened that Day at the Jordan River?

The season of Epiphany, squeezed in between the Christmas season and Lent, is the annual...

December 2019

December 31, 2019

Letting God Creep In

About halfway through his lengthy essay, Schjeldahl notes his agreement with one of Weil’s...

October 2019

October 20, 2019

A Question for Atheists and Theists: How Much Evidence is “Enough”?

This past week I started a unit in my General Ethics students called “Does God...

July 2019

July 30, 2019

Elijah Cummings and Donald Trump: Can Anything Good Come Out Of Baltimore?

Another Saturday morning, another vile stream of racist and/or misogynistic tweets from the President. This...

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