One of the most important things an author has to write when a book is in its late stages is the dedication. I have dedicated books to my mother, my sons, and to Jeanne, but my most recent book–Prayer for People Who Don’t Believe in God (Wood Lake, 2019)–is dedicated to my father. It makes sense, because in many ways this is my most controversial book so far, pushing the envelope of traditional thinking, belief, and practice concerning prayer as... Read more
In a recent edition of The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik reviews two or three books about the English Revolution that occurred during the middle of the 17th century (Charles I losing his head, the meteoric rise and fall of Oliver Cromwell, and so on). Gopnik, always an excellent wordsmith, waxes philosophical toward the end of the essay as he reflects on what we learn about human nature by studying such events. The baseline anxiety of human beings so often turns... Read more
The New Testament reading in today’s lectionary line-up is the stoning of Stephen from the Book of Acts. This reminds me of a brief conversation I had with a Benedictine monk a decade ago. “Happy Stoning Day!” Brother John said as he greeted me after noon prayer the day after Christmas. December 26 is the Feast of St. Stephen, officially designated as the first Christian martyr. Brother John, a guitar-picking, out-of-the-box product of the sixties, is not your typical Benedictine. “I’ve... Read more
You can either think of the creeds of the great traditions . . . as telling you what you ought to think. Or you can say they are in some sense comparable to the theories of science. Lindon Eaves In The Night of the Confessor, Czech Catholic priest (and philosopher/ theologian/ psychologist) Tomáš Halík mentions a friend who is “a physicist, a Catholic, and a nice man” who occasionally meetings of the clergy and gives talks about contemporary developments in physics.... Read more
In last Thursday’s meeting of the “Faith and Doubt” seminar I team-teach with a Dominican priest friend and colleague, the text for the day was the last two-thirds of Rachel Held Evans’ last book, Wholehearted Faith. Evans was the latest in a string of authors, including Michel de Montaigne, Anne Lamott, Soren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Simone Weil, Iris Murdoch, and Tomas Halik that we had considered throughout the semester. As I have written on the blog in... Read more
I have been accused frequently over the years by commenters on my blog and on Facebook of promoting an understanding of Christianity that is significantly different than “traditional and historical” Christianity. I’m not sure what these critics thought they were going to find on a blog called “Freelance Christianity” the they found on Patheos’ “Progressive Christian” channel, but there you go. I’m somewhat amused by the “traditional and historical Christianty” trope, because that almost always means “what conforms to my... Read more
There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?” The two young fish swim on for a bit; eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?” David Foster Wallace opened his 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College with this amusing parable, using it to set up some reflections on how,... Read more
Man is in his actions and practices, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue I run into issues related to storytelling all the time on this blog. Although the name of the blog is “Freelance Christianity,” and it is published on Patheos’ “Progressive Christian” channel, I regularly attract comments from readers who do not fit those categories by any stretch of the imagination. Occasionally, someone using arguments and language I recognize from my... Read more
“Now abide faith, hope, and love; but the greatest of these is love.” These words from the apostle Paul are heard at many, perhaps most, weddings. Everyone wants to believe that love is the greatest, especially on their wedding day. Faith seems to be part of my DNA—challenging it, trying to get rid of it, redefining it, being confused by it, and generally struggling with the “f-word” (as I call it in the classroom) has shaped me for as long... Read more
Regular readers of this blog, or even those who just occasionally drop in, know that I am a college basketball fanatic, particularly for the Providence College Friars. To say that the last few weeks have been a roller coaster ride for Friars fans is the understatement of the year. The 2021-22 season was one for the ages. The Friars won the Big East regular season championship for the first time in school history, then made it to the Sweet Sixteen... Read more
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