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December 2020

December 01, 2020
However reluctant many Trump supporters are to admit it, it now seems quite clear that...

November 2020

November 29, 2020
Over the past few weeks, during Year A of the Eucharistic lectionary, we've been hearing...
November 01, 2020
Some of my conservative evangelical friends have been upset (or perhaps even gleeful?) this past...

October 2020

October 27, 2020
Progressives are understandably in mourning due to the confirmation yesterday of Amy Coney Barrett as...
October 06, 2020
My trusty colleague and sparring partner in matters of Biblical interpretation, "Fellow Dying Inmate," wrote...

August 2020

August 23, 2020
During my 19 years of being an Episcopalian, this particular Sunday in the church year...
August 21, 2020
One of my grandmother's favorite medieval Catholics was, as it happens, St. Bernard of Clairvaux....
August 16, 2020
I love the fact that the Old Testament readings at Mass correspond, as a general...
August 05, 2020
It's becoming more common for conservative Catholics to criticize Vatican II. Most recently, Anthony Esolen...

July 2020

July 17, 2020
  I was planning to write a blog post, or possibly a series, on "cancel...
July 13, 2020
Nearly ten years ago, when I lived in Huntington Indiana, I volunteered to read to...
July 08, 2020
My Patheos colleague "Fellow Dying Inmate" has been writing a fascinating series of posts on...
July 05, 2020
In April 2009, English journalist Edward Luce asked President Barack Obama if he believed in...

June 2020

June 28, 2020
First, they came for the Confederate statues. But it didn't stop there. Soon, the "woke"...
June 23, 2020
Most of the arguments I get into on Facebook are about theology or politics. And...
June 13, 2020
Last Monday, police withdrew from six blocks of Seattle's "Capitol Hill" neighborhood, abandoning the area...
June 05, 2020
It seems to be remarkably hard for many white conservative Christians to affirm the slogan...

May 2020

May 27, 2020
This past Sunday, many American Catholics celebrated the Ascension of the Lord into heaven. The...
May 20, 2020
Welcome to this new Patheos blog, Light in the West! As you can see from...

December 2018

December 31, 2018
(Image attribution: still from It's A Wonderful Life, National Telefilm Associates, public domain) It's a...

October 2018

October 31, 2018
  Three years ago, I wrote this rather polemical piece attacking the celebration of "Reformation...
October 21, 2018
Every so often one hears conservative Catholics (or conservative Christians generally) say that people whom...
October 07, 2018
Consider the following tale from another timeline:It was sometime during the presidency of Barack Obama....

June 2018

June 28, 2018
The political party to which I belong, the American Solidarity Party, has been going through...

March 2018

March 26, 2018
The Daily Mail announces breathlessly that "Christianity in Europe is dying out." This is just...
March 25, 2018
In this post, I'm going to lay out what I think the film The Last...

December 2017

December 16, 2017
I've been working on a series of blog posts on Brad Gregory's The Unintended Reformation,...
December 10, 2017
(image: public domain)Chapter One of The Unintended Reformation is probably the most often cited. Indeed, many...
December 03, 2017
Several weeks ago, I finally watched Martin Scorsese's film Silence. Given the title and the...

November 2017

November 01, 2017
As usual, I'd meant to have posted more on the Reformation leading up to the...
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