It’s always an awkward situation, no matter how many times it has happened in my twenty-five plus years of teaching. Fifteen minutes into a planned two-hour seminar, it isn’t working. Not that this was surprising last Monday. In the interdisciplinary course I teach in, we were in the middle of early Christianity; the readings for the day were essays about two of the central doctrines of the Christian faith from two fourth-century theologians: Hilary of Poitiers on the Trinity, and... Read more
In my life-long spiritual journey, the decade of my twenties was the charismatic decade. No, that was not when I began to develop my current charismatic personality—that’s when I first encountered the Christian charismatic movement. For the uninitiated, the charismatic movement was (and is) marked positively by an infusion of divine energy into churches and denominations that had for too long lived out the negative side of Paul’s observation that “the letter kills, but the spirit gives life.” For those... Read more
A candle flame looks beautiful in the light of morning . . . It seems to me to be a metaphor for the human soul, the singular light within the great general light of existence. Marilynne Robinson, Gilead As I prepare for a course that I will be teaching for the first time in the spring, I have been reading and re-reading various essays by Marilynne Robinson. This is the first time that she has appeared on one of my... Read more
A few days ago, reports that Roy Moore, Alabama Republican candidate for the United States Senate, initiated several sexual encounters with teenage girls, including one who was fourteen, when he was in his thirties were published in the Washington Post. Political sides were taken immediately, of course—we’ve unfortunately come to accept and expect it in our fraught and fractured political times. But one defense of Moore’s alleged behavior particularly caught the attention of many, including me. Alabama State Auditor Jim... Read more
I just started a new unit in my General Ethics classes with fifty juniors and seniors: Does ethics have anything to do with God? On a Catholic college campus, where a significant portion of the students are products of many years of parochial school education, this is a big issue. Religious folks have been known to argue that the only possible reliable foundation for moral absolutes is belief in God, implying either implicitly or explicitly that atheistic non-believers lack any reason... Read more
Imagine a jigsaw puzzle, a thousand pieces or more. There is no box showing what the completed puzzle will look like. But that’s okay, because this is an unusual puzzle. The various pieces can fit together in many different ways, producing any number of possible finished pictures. The puzzle assembler has to decide, early on in the process, what she or he wants the finished product to look like; each subsequent choice about which pieces to join together is guided... Read more
Over the past few weeks, Americans have been reminded once again of the misogyny and gender bias that lies just below the surface in our culture. It is difficult to imagine that there is a person in this country who either finds such attitudes acceptable or wants to hear yet another person’s opinions about them—so I won’t dig further into the details in this post. Instead, I’m interested in exploring why so many people, from every political and religious persuasion... Read more
Have you never felt like one of those pawns forgotten in a corner of the board, with the sounds of battle fading behind them? They try to stand straight but wonder if they still have a king to serve. Arturo Pérez-Reverte I am a great lover of mysteries. Arturo Pérez-Reverte, an internationally acclaimed Spanish author of mysteries and thrillers notable for their intricate and labyrinthine plots, is a current favorite. He’s good—not at the top of my list of mystery... Read more
It’s Halloween!–one of my least favorite holidays of the year. I know that offends many people, but so be it. Still, the onset of Halloween brings back memories–many of them religion and church related. Maybe that’s why I don’t like the holiday! As a 61-year-old guy with no small children in my life, I don’t do Halloween. Often Jeanne and I celebrate the day by going to a late afternoon movie, followed by dinner, so we can be conveniently away during... Read more
Despite my consistent self-description as a “person of faith,” I have been accused occasionally over the years, usually by various Christian colleagues, of actually being an atheist. I do take atheism very seriously, and have often written about how this has helped me understand and express my faith more effectively and clearly. I have regularly written on this blog about what atheists and persons of faith share in common and how they can communicate fruitfully and intelligently. The first chapter... Read more
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