I was invited earlier this week by an online publication that I write for occasionally to submit an essay with the tentative title “America is not a Christian country, and that’s a good thing.” The idea for the essay came from this passage in Marilynne Robinson’s recent essay “A Proof, a Text, and Instruction”: Those who invoke the idea of a “real America” would like to import a problem history has so far spared us. Take just the assertion that... Read more
So here we are, a year and a half since Donald Trump was elected President. It seems like an eternity—time apparently only flies when you are having fun. Since November 2016, there has been no end of unsolicited advice from all parts of the political and religious spectrum for those who, as I, have struggled both to process what has happened and, more importantly, how to approach the days, weeks, months, and years ahead. I have, for instance, been told... Read more
In my General Ethics class, my students and I have just finished a three week unit on race issues. Although the college I teach at has made great strides toward diversifying the student body and faculty over the past decade, this particular class reminds me of how much more work there is to do. Of my twenty-five students, only two are persons of color–the rest are as white as I am. Accordingly, I began our considerations of race and related... Read more
I come from a hardcore Protestant world, a world in which we did not do “saints.” Even though I have spent much of my adult life, first as a graduate student, then as a professor, in Catholic higher education, I am still somewhat confused by and uncomfortable with the very notion of “sainthood.” I resonate positively with one of the main characters in Albert Camus’ The Plague who, when described as a “saint” by another character, responds that “sanctity doesn’t really appeal... Read more
Tomorrow is "Good Shepherd Sunday," including the 23rd Psalm--a text so familiar that it is easy to ignore its focus on one of the most pressing questions each of us has to face: What path in life should I follow? Read more
Not long ago, The Atlantic published an article by Emma Green entitled “Democrats Have a Religion Problem,” consisting largely of an interview with Michael Wear, author of Reclaiming Hope and a former director of former President Obama’s faith-outreach initiative in 2012. The Atlantic: Democrats have a religion problem The article begins by pointing out that Democrats, once again, have proven themselves to be illiterate, ignorant, and clueless concerning religion and persons of faith, given President Trump’s garnering of 81% of... Read more
In the aftermath of Easter, Christians often enjoy retelling various stories about Jesus from the New Testament. “But they are just stories,” the skeptics say, no different than the myths and legends of Greek mythology or the tales of King Arthur, similar to the way in which those who wish to dismiss Darwin say that his theory of natural selection is “just a theory.”But sometimes a theory is more than just an educated guess, and sometimes a story is more... Read more
A recent edition of The New Yorker had a timely cartoon on the back page. Two mourners are at a funeral home standing in front of the recently deceased’s open coffin. In the coffin is the Grim Reaper, complete with black hood and skeletal hands clutching his scythe. The caption reads: “I was hoping taxes would go first.” But they didn’t, and tax day is upon us. Actually, we are fortunate because April 15th falls on a Sunday this year,... Read more
I drove past a billboard not long ago that raised my blood pressure a bit. It’s the sort of billboard that dots the landscape in various parts of the country but that one very seldom sees in blue state, outrageously liberal Rhode Island. Trumpeting the “fact” that God created the heavens and the earth (because the first sentence of that irrefutable science text, the Bible, tells us so), it not-so-subtlely rejects the fact of Darwinian natural selection by putting a... Read more
Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. Shakespeare, King Lear This week, in the “Apocalypse” colloquium that I am team-teaching with a colleague from the English department this semester, our text is Shakespeare’s King Lear. When we were planning the course over the past many months, it seemed clear to both my colleague and me that this particular play belonged on the syllabus–but why? We’ve read fiction and essays, viewed movies and documentaries, that explored apocalyptic scenarios ranging... Read more
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