Tag Archives: Religion

Pious Scientists in the Late Middle Ages

Piety, the awe and respect for God and His Creation, drove philosophers and scientists throughout the Christian era beginning during the Roman Empire and continuing through the European Middle Ages—and beyond. Christian philosopher-scientists relied heavily on their Greek and Roman … Continue reading

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Philo Judaeus the Pious Scientist

Ancient thinkers–philosophers and scientists–of the Mediterranean world knew that wisdom is a universal that transcends individual knowing, an awareness of truth that transcends the individual existence of each person. The Old Testament and New Testament imply that the Creation has … Continue reading

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Piety and Science

Records of the human quest for knowledge have existed for four to five thousand years, revealing that as humans have confronted the vastness of the cosmos, as they have watched and listened and felt the natural environment, their response has … Continue reading

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Being a Christian Scholar in a Secular Academic World

The culture wars of our times have been centered in universities since the emergence of the Counter Culture in the 1960s. University scholars have often taken the lead in progressive stances on ethical, cultural, and religious issues. For many years … Continue reading

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Fanny Allen (1784-1819): From Vermont to the Religious Hospitallers of St. Joseph

Fanny Allen’s commitment to the Great Commission was not flashy, the stuff of grand tales of perseverance, suffering, and martyrdom—more the everyday, the challenges to faith of family and friends, the renewed commitment time and again, the daily putting on … Continue reading

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Juniper Berthiaume (1744-?) French Missionary to the Penobscot Tribe

Pope Francis said on his Apostolic Journey to Canada in July 2022, “I have been waiting to come here and be with you! Here, from this place associated with painful memories, I would like to begin what I consider a … Continue reading

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Missionary John Thayer

John Thayer (1755-1815) was a New England convert, educated at Yale where he was taught that all things Roman Catholic were despicable. Then he went to Europe and underwent a conversion—a most unexpected religious change. He wrote a book about … Continue reading

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Louis Hennepin (1626-1704), Missionary of Hope

When a person thinks back to the colonial American past imagining what the first Catholic missionaries who braved the elements, journeyed into the forests, and canoed down American rivers, must have been like, they are thinking of such a person … Continue reading

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Saint Anthony of Padua, Franciscan Thaumaturgist

St. Anthony (1195-1231, Anno Domini) was a Franciscan thaumaturgist famous for his erudition, oratory, works of charity, and miracles. A native of Portugal, for a time he was a cleric with the monastic order of St. Augustine. In his early … Continue reading

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God’s Providence: What did Early American Religious Thinkers Believe about the Role of God in Human Affairs?

The eighteenth century in America was a time of awakening from the slumber of the past. Light was shed on the darkness of superstition, irrationality, autocracy, aristocratic privilege, and dogma. The individual, weighed down by the chains of time, institutions, … Continue reading

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