In Philosophical Fragments, 19th-century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard tells a lovely story about a powerful king who falls in love with a lowly maiden. The maiden is unaware of the king’s love, and the king is worried. Knowing that love is built on equality, how is the gap between his royal greatness and her humble maidenhood to be crossed? He does not want to coerce her into loving him by revealing his love in all of its splendor, nor would elevating her... Read more
Today is the first day of the new Christian liturgical year–the First Sunday of Advent. Last year I had the privilege of giving the sermon on liturgical New Year’s Day at Trinity Episcopal Church in Pawtuxet, RI. Here’s what I said. Happy New Year! Today is the First Sunday of Advent, the first day of the new liturgical year. That’s Year One in the Book of Common Prayer daily readings, and Year B for the Sunday and Feast Day Lectionary... Read more
Today is Black Friday, the unfortunate beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Apparently in service to the holiday spirit of capitalism, some stores opened in yesterday’s evening hours, forcing their employees to interrupt their Thanksgivings in pursuit of increased sales. It is also the beginning of this year’s skirmish in the much-hyped “War on Christmas.” This is a “war” allegedly being waged by all sorts of non-Christians in this country, a war whose continuing battlefields include the apparent prohibition against... Read more
I have a Facebook acquaintance, a fellow graduate of St. John’s College, who posts five things she is thankful for every morning. I admire this and am always glad when I bump into her daily post on those mornings that I’m on Facebook as well. It is a practice that I have told myself many times that I need to develop, but have so far have failed to do. But as we approach the best holiday of the year, let... Read more
At a recent department meeting, our department chair wondered whether it might be good for building department chemistry to have various events in which we share teaching tricks of the trade with each other. “After all,” he said, “two of our faculty have won the Accinno award!” The Accinno award is my college’s “Teacher of the Year” award, which I won fifteen years ago in just the third year of its existence. The departmental colleague who won the same award... Read more
Today in my ethics classes we will begin our final unit of the semester: Gun violence. First up is an essay by Simone Gubler called “Philosophizing with Guns.” She wrote it while she was a doctoral student in philosophy at the University of Texas, reflecting on a Texas “campus carry” bill signed into law a few months earlier that specifies libraries, offices, and classrooms on campus as “concealed carry zones”-areas in which people with concelaled handgun licenses may carry their... Read more
I am always encouraged when I find that various topics and issues that I obsess about are obsessions for others as well. As anyone who reads this blog frequently or even occasionally knows, for instance, I am obsessed with the dangers of certainty. As I regularly argue for the virtues of doubt, I am often accused of being a relativist (which in the world of truth-seeking is close to being accused of being a socialist in politics) and a denier... Read more
Uncertainty doesn’t make a person less faithful; it just makes her more honest. Rachel Held Evans In Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel Gilead, Reverend John Ames (one of my top five favorite characters in all of fiction) frequently expresses doubt concerning his faith, something unexpected in a Congregational minister, at least in some circles. In the middle of the novel, Ames spends a few pages considering doubt and uncertainty in one’s faith within the context of challenges from non-believers to “prove”... Read more
Psalm 146, one of my favorites among many candidates in the Book of Psalms from the Jewish scriptures, was the lectionary selection last Sunday. The psalmist tells us that [The Lord] executes justice for the oppressed [and] gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets the prisoners free; the Lord opens the eyes of the blind . . . The Lord watches over the strangers; the Lord upholds the widow and the orphan . . . In one gospel account,... Read more
Fans of Rachel Held Evans’ work are welcoming the publication of her final book, Wholehearted Faith–my copy is scheduled to show up today. Held Evans tragically died at the age of 38 in 2019 with her latest book half finished; the Amazon.com blurb for the new book says that “With the help of her close friend and author Jeff Chu, that work-in-progress has been woven together with some of her other unpublished writings into a rich collection of essays that... Read more
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