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August 2019

August 29, 2019

The Life of a College Professor: Nice Work if You Can Get It

It's the first week of the new academic year, which is always a good time...

May 2019

May 28, 2019

Say Something Profound

At the end of each academic year, I tend to reflect back on the past...

March 2019

March 26, 2019

Complicated Truths and the Challenge of Being Good

Once many years ago, a couple I was close friends with was having marital problems....

March 21, 2019

The GOATs of the Western Tradition

The beautiful Ruane Center for the Humanities on our campus opened in the Fall of 2013,...

March 13, 2019

My Love/Hate Relationship with the Fourth Member of the Trinity

Twenty-five years ago last month, I interviewed at Providence College for a tenure-track position in...

September 2018

September 23, 2018

When an Atheist Finds Out That There is More Than One Kind of Christian

One of the many things that make teaching a rewarding vocation is receiving unsolicited testimonials...

August 2018

August 28, 2018

Happy New Year! The First Day of Classes

Today is the first full class day of the semester at my college. Everyone has...

July 2018

July 19, 2018

Making the Universe More Beautiful Through Diversity

A number of years ago, during a public forum on my campus focused on steps...

July 01, 2018

Prayer for People Who Don’t Believe in God

Last week I contracted with a publisher to write a book on prayer--the working title...

May 2018

May 22, 2018

Why the Liberal Arts Matter

Two-time Pulitzer Prize winning historian David McCullough was the speaker at Providence College's Commencement exercises...

May 18, 2018

A Prayer for Graduates on Commencement Weekend

May God bless you with a restless discomfort about easy answers, half-truths and superficial relationships,...

May 08, 2018

The Lord Be With You . . .

What is the best way to get the attention of a bunch of Episcopalians? I...

April 2018

April 24, 2018

The A$$hole Saint

I come from a hardcore Protestant world, a world in which we did not do...

April 10, 2018

Moral Apocalypse

Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. Shakespeare, King Lear This week,...

April 08, 2018

There Was Not a Needy Person Among Them . . .

A couple of days ago, the following from Franklin Graham came across my Twitter feed:...

February 2018

February 24, 2018

What I Can Do About Gun Violence

The year anniversary of the horrific massacre at The Pulse in Orlando a week ago,...

February 08, 2018

Tolerance on Steroids

What happens when a perfectly good virtue gets turned into not only the most important virtue,...

February 06, 2018

Two Plus Two Makes Four

In J. M. Coetzee’s strange and fascinating novel The Childhood of Jesus, the precocious child...

January 2018

January 23, 2018

Fact or Opinion?

So moral relativism makes us more corrupt, but it also keeps us open-minded; moral objectivism...

January 21, 2018

Dunkin’ Donuts and Sacred Spaces

I currently am working my way slowly through Walter Isaacson’s wonderful biography of Leonardo da...

December 2017

December 29, 2017

The Hungry Person’s Bread–Best of “Bearings Online” #5

I occasionally write articles for Bearings Online, the online publication of the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical...

December 16, 2017

Faith in a Post-Truth World

I really didn’t say everything I said. Yogi Berra A bit over a year ago, the...

November 2017

November 10, 2017

Evangelical Atheism

I just started a new unit in my General Ethics classes with fifty juniors and...

November 05, 2017

Silence and Submission

Over the past few weeks, Americans have been reminded once again of the misogyny and...

October 2017

October 12, 2017

God Doesn’t Need Our Protection

Human beings never behave so badly as when they believe they are protecting God. Barbara Brown...

October 10, 2017

Knowing the Unknowable

Every fall I spend a week with over one hundred freshman exploring the familiar but...

September 2017

September 21, 2017

Flesh and Blood

What is bothering me incessantly is the question of what Christianity really is, or indeed...

September 15, 2017

What I Want, When I Want It

I was born into a world in which preference-expression was a highly evolved art form...

August 2017

August 29, 2017

They’re Baaack . . . .

We are in the business of believing in, and promoting, things that don’t yet exist....

August 24, 2017

The Point of a Professor

When I was a young professor, the chair of my department frequently would say in...

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