Religion and the Postmodern Student
For this semester I will be offering my reflections on an introductory, freshmen-level course on western core texts that I am teaching. By the second week into…
The God of Philosophy or the God of Faith?
A wise man has written a book called God or Nothing—the title a profoundly pithy expression of the primary choice we must make in our lives. Yet…
The Religious Lecture: Synthesizing Persona and Narrative Immersion
Since the late nineteenth century religious studies has been conflicted by multiple, often mutually agonistic, means of study. The rise of biblical criticism, and historical criticism, has…
Creating a Socratic Lecture Space in Religious Studies
This chapter will make two main points regarding lectures in religious studies (RS) courses at non-confessional universities and colleges. First, it will reimagine the lecture space and…
T.S. Eliot and Reconversion on Ash Wednesday
Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita . . . There is something telling about man’s tendency to view his life as a journey, for journeys convey…
What Is This Thing Called Virtue?
Believe it or not, in at least one specific area public discourse in the United States is a bit better than it was a few decades ago.…
The Real Season of Giving
Complaints about “materialism” at Christmas have never really bothered me. For those who believe in the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, there is a real lesson about…
Finding Faith in California
By now, we’ve been home from California for over a week. But what an odd five days we had there! I’ll give you the condensed version. For…
How I Got My Philosophic Theme
As far as I can recall, it was a specific event, leading to a particular experience, that gave me the defining theme of the work I’ve done…
Your Kin-Dom Come: The Lord’s Prayer in a Global Age
Your Kin-Dom Come: The Lord’s Prayer in a Global Age. William Thompson-Uberuaga. Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2018. Your Kin-Dom Come is a deep spiritual, theological and…
Girard and the Scapegoat
Introduction On another occasion,[1] I employed Hesiod’s contradictory characterizations of Saturn in the Theogony and Works and Days to inquire into the seeming paradox of a filicidal…
Who am I? Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Journey to the Center of the Person
Who am I? In a poem written before his execution at Flossenbürg concentration camp, Dietrich Bonhoeffer asks ‘Whom am I? This or the Other?’ He explains how…
The Odyssey of Saint Augustine
In 430 A.D., with the Vandals laying siege to the city of Hippo, Augustine of Hippo died with Count Boniface by his side. The Roman general was…
Justice Returns to the Sources
The Art of the Good. Valentin Tomberg, translated by Stephen Churchyard and James T. Wetmore. Angelico Press, 2021. Fiction will never really be able to compete…
Being Called Beyond the Wall
The Four Wise Men. Michel Tournier (Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1997). The gospel stories are about movement—Jesus comes to a town, crosses to the…