I Was a Stranger
A bit over a year ago, in the midst of the Presidential campaign that no one will ever forget, I found myself part of a Facebook discussion thread that I should have avoided participating in. On that...
View ArticleWhat Christians Get Wrong About Jesus
On July 5, 1838, in the middle of what he called “this refulgent summer,” during which “it has been a luxury to draw the breath of life,” thirty-five-year-old Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered what has...
View ArticleSocratic Faith
He lived over two millennia ago, and as far as we know he never wrote anything. We learn everything we know about him from others, often in reports and descriptions written decades after his death. The...
View ArticleWho Would Jesus Bomb?
It’s President’s Day, which for all college professors means–as do all Monday holidays in the middle of the semester–“catch up day.” It’s the Spring semester’s version of Columbus Day. I will be...
View ArticleNature and Nature’s God
What is the difference between a cathedral and a physics lab? Are they not both saying: Hello? Annie Dillard, “Teaching a Stone to Talk” A few weeks ago, Harvard political philosopher and...
View ArticleThe Problem of Goodness
During the early years of my career I developed the habit of teaching at least one overload course per semester in my college’s evening program. The immediate reason for taking on the extra course was...
View ArticleWhat Silence Sounds Like
Hello darkness, my old friend, I’ve come to talk to you again. “The Sound of Silence” One Sunday a couple of months ago as I was listening to our local NPR station in the car during an errand run, I...
View ArticleI Don’t Know
Let me tell you here first, “trust in God” has never floated my boat as a viable answer to religious questions. From a student notebook On the day after Christmas 2004, the third strongest earthquake...
View ArticleOne Heart and Soul
In my “Markets and Morals” colloquium no long ago, our text was a co-authored volume in which two economists, who happened to also be persons of Christian faith, alternated essays and responses on a...
View ArticleA Liberal’s Worst Nightmare
One of my teaching colleagues and mentors used to love to tell the story of what happened one day after he and a colleague teamed up for a particularly impassioned lecture in the interdisciplinary...
View Article
More Pages to Explore .....