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September 2024

September 24, 2024

How to Make God Interesting

It is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for a [non-Christian] to hear a Christian, supposedly...

September 20, 2024

Why Being Uncomfortable is a Good Thing

A new podcast that I've been enjoying recently is Ali Velshi's "Banned Book Club"--I highly...

September 17, 2024

Jesus and a Four-Letter Word

Next week will be one of my favorite teaching weeks of the semester as I...

September 15, 2024

Comfort is vastly overrated

In the interdisciplinary, team-taught course I am participating in this semester, we spent our second...

September 08, 2024

What Does a Mature Faith Look Like?

I detect that a rebellion against all things “religious” is growing on me. Often it...

September 06, 2024

First Day of Class Dreams and Nightmares

Last Tuesday was the first day of classes on my campus for the 2024-25 academic...

August 2024

August 30, 2024

Getting Comfortable with Paradox

It is standard fare for Christians to believe that human beings are made of body...

August 25, 2024

What To Do with a Difficult Teaching

Today is the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost. Here is my entry for this Sunday in...

August 20, 2024

Jesus the Teacher

I begin the first chapter of my teaching memoir Nice Work If You Can Get...

August 16, 2024

What I Learned About Teaching From My Favorite Movie

Last Sunday Jeanne and I had guests over for dinner whom we had not seen...

August 13, 2024

Having the Right “Niyyah”

I recently heard an interview on NPR with Rami Nashashibi, a professor of sociology who...

July 2024

July 26, 2024

A Young Woman Confronts Her Inherent Racism

It's been a crazy week, hasn't it? I have deliberately avoided going political on this...

July 07, 2024

The Wonder of a Child

I'm back! After a two week break it's good to be blogging again. As I continue...

June 2024

June 20, 2024

Not Long Ago. Not Far Away

Jeanne and I went to the Auschwitz exhibition in Boston yesterday--it's there for the rest...

June 18, 2024

Feeding the Hungry Stranger

In the honors interdisciplinary program I teach in, my colleagues and I have chosen over...

May 2024

May 21, 2024

Some Random Thoughts As We Enter Summer

Even though summer doesn’t officially begin for another month or so, for a college professor...

May 04, 2024

Weaponizing the Bible

The final meeting of my honors colloquium on Michel de Montaigne was last Thursday. It...

May 02, 2024

Big News, and a Blast from the Past!

First, some big news! Yesterday I signed a contract for my book A Year of...

April 2024

April 19, 2024

Healing Begins with Listening

It occurred to me a couple of days ago that the spring semester is ending...

April 17, 2024

What are God’s Pronouns?

RMy baseline criterion for whether a particular class has gone well is to answer the...

April 14, 2024

Designing God

Voltaire once wrote that if God did not exist, we would have to invent him....

April 07, 2024

Thomas, Michel, and the Importance of Doubt

Jeanne and I spent Thursday through Saturday of Holy Week in a movie theater. We...

March 2024

March 28, 2024

Could You Not Watch With Me One Hour?

HOly WeekSome people can sleep anywhere. One of those people was a student in one...

March 26, 2024

God Finds Us to be Infinitely Interesting

April is going to be Marilynne Robinson month for me. In the team taught interdisciplinary...

March 07, 2024

Let There Be Light (or not)

In the opening lines of Genesis we are told that “In the beginning . ....

March 05, 2024

Another Birthday Tomorrow–do I have anything new to say?

Tomorrow is my birthday (#68)--the fact that my youngest son finds a way to travel...

March 03, 2024

Faith on Three Wheels

Next week is my birthday week, an annual opportunity for me to consider how old...

February 2024

February 25, 2024

What If I Don’t Want to Take Up My Cross?

Last week I introduced a bunch of honors sophomores to Dietrich Bonhoeffer's distinction between "Cheap...

February 15, 2024

A Terrible Beauty

The sea pronounces something, over and over, in a hoarse whisper. I cannot quite make...

February 08, 2024

Doing Good for the Sake of Goodness

Last Monday's text in my sophomore Honors seminar, a course that spans literature, history, theology...

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