You Say You Want a Revolution?

Last updated on: July 19, 2023 at 11:31 am By Vance Morgan

There is a saying, particularly popular among conservatives, that “A conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.” I am a liberal, but cannot challenge the alleged truth of this saying since I have never (thankfully) been mugged. In more than six decades of experience, however, I have had plenty of opportunity to wonder about an important question that this saying raises for everyone, regardless of political or social commitments—What happens when ideology runs headlong into real life? I got... Read more

Achieiving the Peaceable Kingdom

Last updated on: July 19, 2023 at 11:30 am By Vance Morgan

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One Sunday morning a number of years ago, I noticed that a reproduction of a familiar yet peculiar painting was propped up on a stand at the base of the reader’s lectern. The reading from the Jewish scriptures for the morning was the following familiar passage from Isaiah: The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them. The... Read more

Do I Teach or Am I a Teacher? On Being a Verb Rather than a Noun

Last updated on: July 17, 2023 at 4:36 pm By Vance Morgan

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I have two book projects in the works these days. I just finished a full rough draft of the first book and have turned it over to a few trusted friends and colleagues for review and input. While that’s going on, my thoughts turn to my second book project, one that I’ve had in mind since before the pandemic. Tentatively titled Nice Work If You Can Get It: Lessons and Stories from a Life in the Classroom, the time has... Read more

Limitations, Shortcomings, and Contentment

Last updated on: July 15, 2023 at 8:41 am By Vance Morgan

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For the past many years, my upper-division (juniors and seniors) classes have included an ongoing writing assignment that I call the “Intellectual Notebook.” Students are required to make at least one (preferably two) entries of 750 words or so per week, selecting a portion of an assigned text as the jumping off point for an open-ended reflection on what the passage makes them feel and think about, as well as what connections they can make. I describe my reasoning behind... Read more

Why Is God So Wasteful?

Last updated on: July 12, 2023 at 9:05 pm By Vance Morgan

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As of next month, I will have been blogging for eleven years. As I suspect is true of many bloggers, I am obsessed with my blog statistics. This has been a problem over the past month or so because Google Analytics, which provides the numbers I am obsessed with, chose without my permission to entirely change the format of its information. I didn’t get to opt out–as of July 1, the old way went away and the new format showed... Read more

Complete Sentences in One Word

Last updated on: July 10, 2023 at 1:50 pm By Vance Morgan

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All of us live in a world filled with words. For academics, words are the tools of our trade. Even for introverted academics such as I am, the tendency both verbally and in writing is to think that the more words one uses, the better. One of the most difficult things I’ve had to learn during the decade-plus of writing this blog is how to be concise and how to introduce, develop, and complete an idea in no more than... Read more

What We Can Learn about Trust from a Corgi

Last updated on: June 30, 2023 at 2:34 pm By Vance Morgan

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It’s hard to believe that our corgi Bovina, the love and center of Jeanne’s and my life, is going to be two in September. It doesn’t seem like nineteen months ago that Jeanne and I drove eighteen hours straight from Atlanta to Providence with a six-week old puppy. People have asked me what Bovina’s “adjustment period” was when she arrived at her new home. There was no adjustment period. She walked into the house, said “I’m in charge,” and nothing... Read more

Is There Life Before Death?

Last updated on: July 5, 2023 at 8:47 pm By Vance Morgan

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A few years ago I had the opportunity to hear one of my heroes give a talk. Jeanne had to be away for work that weekend; as I took her to the airport she expressed her disappointment at not being able to attend the talk with me. “I feel like I’m going to hear the Virgin Mary or something,” I said. What I heard that Saturday was a compelling and inspiring prophetic call to action. I first encountered Joan Chittister’s... Read more

Sitting in Safety Without Fear–an Independence Day Reflection

Last updated on: July 4, 2023 at 1:02 am By Vance Morgan

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Every one shall sit in safety under his own vine and fig-tree, and there shall be none to make him afraid. George Washington, Letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, RI Today is Independence Day–Jeanne and I are flying to spend three days with our son Caleb and daughter-in-law Alisha in Asheville, North Carolina. I’m not sure how they celebrate July 4th in Asheville, but research has revealed that Asheville has more micro-breweries per capita than any city in the United States.... Read more

Can We Negotiate With God?

Last updated on: July 1, 2023 at 8:00 am By Vance Morgan

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Today’s reading from the Jewish scriptures is Genesis 22, the well-known and infamous story of Abraham’s (almost) sacrifice of Isaac. This story made several appearances last academic year in my classroom, from a week spent with Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling to a class on post-Holocaust Jewish theology. But I have most frequently used this familiar story in my ethics classes in tandem with another tale from four chapters earlier in Genesis. Both stories raise a question that is still pressing for... Read more