Freelance Christianity

"If you've ever wondered how a person can be a Christian and also an intellectual, this is the book for you. In an engaging, personal style, Morgan brings his keen philosopher's insight to work on our concepts of God and the nature of belief. In discussing how faith works in us he goes beyond the expected areas of attentiveness, silence, and humility, and explores courage (what do we fear? what is worth dying for?) and beauty as the place where the human and the divine meet. Rich with allusions to the Bible, popular culture, and both ancient and contemporary authors, this book is a refreshing reminder that faith is not something abstract but is revealed in transformed lives here and now."

--Kathleen Norris, author of Journey: New & Selected Poems and Acedia & Me



"Vance Morgan is the college philosophy teacher everyone should wish for. In these sometimes outrageous and always imaginative essays (e.g., an exchange between Jesus and the Sadducees rendered as beer-fueled guy-banter in a sports bar), Morgan shows how we live in and through big ideas every day, and that faith and reason correct and fulfill one another, even if, as in any marriage, things get testy at times."

--Donald Ottenhoff, executive director, Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research



"Vance Morgan brings everything important to bear in these insightful, witty, and even moving commentaries on the questions of faith. He doesn't stand above them, either. He is personally generous as he adds to the mix his own pilgrimage from being the son of a conservative Baptist pastor to being a philosopher and teacher. Walking together, we learn along the way that the questions of faith are questions of faith and life." 

--Eric O. Springsted, Interim Senior Pastor, Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, New York City; Librarian, The Center of Theological Inquiry, Princeton, NJ