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American media has only just begun to speculate about the political leanings of Pope Leo XIV as they comb through his social media posts. Just as they tried to fit Pope Francis into the binary categories of conservative/liberal and traditional/progressive, so too will they with Leo. Such analysis so often fails because it rarely takes seriously what animates their lives: proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ. Gospel means good news, and the four Gospels are these men’s principal source of guidance. To understand Francis’s words and deeds, we have to take seriously that he prayed with these Gospels for his entire adult life. We can say the same about Leo XIV. Neither prioritizes whether their positions align with liberal or conservative positions; rather both worry whether they are being Jesus’s faithful disciples. Here are just a few examples of what challenges them when they pray with the Gospels. In Luke, Jesus announces his ministry quoting from the prophet Isaiah. The Spirit has sent him to proclaim the following: good news to the poor, the release of prisoners, the blind seeing, and the oppressed being liberated (Luke 4: 14-22). Francis’s relentless insistence that we remember and care for the poor comes from his obedience to gospel passages like these. Before his election, Robert Prevost lived out this ministry of Jesus among the Peruvian people whom he greeted in his first address as Pope Leo XIV. In the current political landscape, liberals and conservatives fall short when measured by the Gospel’s standard. Francis and Leo have meditated on and preached from Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount many times since their ordination. The Sermon opens with the Beatitudes where Jesus identifies those blessed in his kingdom. He names the poor, the mourner, the meek, the merciful, the pure of heart, the peacemaker, the one hungry and thirsty for righteousness, and the one persecuted for the sake of righteousness.  In his exhortation on holiness, Rejoice and Be Glad, Pope Francis describes the Beatitudes as ”the Christian’s identity card” (63), even as “the world pushes us towards another way of living” (65). He encourages Christians to be open to the Holy Spirit and to “allow [Jesus’s] words to unsettle us, to challenge us and to demand a real change in the way we live” (66).[i] In light of the Beatitudes, the liberal-conservative binary dissolves and the traditional melds with the so-called “progressive.” The American media notes every time that Pope Francis and Pope Leo speak on behalf of migrants and refugees. This defense should come as no surprise when one turns to Matthew 25 and reads Jesus’s parable about the final judgment. A king, aka Jesus, welcomes into his kingdom those who, unbeknownst to them, tended to him when they tended to the hungry and thirsty, clothed the naked, welcomed the stranger, cared for the ill, visited prisoners. Those who failed to show mercy end up in the kingdom where demonic suffering reigns eternally. Reflecting on this passage in 2016 during the extraordinary jubilee year of mercy, Pope Francis warned: “The lesson of Jesus that we have heard does not allow escape routes.”[ii] And Leo XIV, in his first message told the world, “we want to be a Church of the Synod, a Church that walks, a Church that always seeks peace, that always seeks charity, that always seeks to be close, especially to those who suffer.”[iii] Like Francis, Leo recognizes there is no escape route from tending to the suffering. Jesus demands even more from his disciples than these works of mercy. In the Sermon on the Mount, he calls them to be light and salt for the world and challenges them in all manner of living from turning the other cheek and  loving their enemies to avoiding even lustful thoughts. These demands culminate in the Torah’s commandment: love God with one’s entire being, to which Jesus joins love the neighbor as the self. In his parables, Jesus identifies the neighbor as the one who shows compassion exemplified in the Good Samaritan and the father to his prodigal son as well as his resentful elder son. Like the first disciples, most Christians in every age fall short of these demands.  Pope Francis meant it when he declared himself a sinner in need of God’s mercy. Clearly, contemporary Christians face challenges that require creative fidelity from attending to the climate crisis to understanding the complexities of sexual and gender identity. An often cited example of Francis’s “liberal agenda” is “who am I to judge?”  Rarely is Francis’s entire comment quoted. He said, “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?” In this response, Francis gives witness to  two dimensions of the Church’s life. The first is to embrace every person because no one is excluded from seeking and receiving the love and mercy of God. Echoing Francis, Leo XIV calls for “a Church that builds bridges, dialogue, always open to receive like this square with its open arms, all, all who need our charity, our presence, dialogue and love.”[iv] Yet, implicit in Francis’s response is the challenge to live in the demanding way of discipleship: loving God with one’s whole being and loving the neighbor as one’s self. To borrow from Paul, in Christ, there is neither conservative nor liberal, traditional nor progressive. Or as Leo XIV declares in the motto of his papacy: In illo uno unum”: “In the one Christ, we are one”.     Notes & Bibliography [i] https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_exhortations/documents/papa-francesco_esortazione-ap_20180319_gaudete-et-exsultate.html [ii] https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/audiences/2016/documents/papa-francesco_20160630_udienza-giubilare.html [iii] https://www.npr.org/2025/05/08/nx-s1-5392318/transcript-pope-leo-xiv-speech [iv] https://www.npr.org/2025/05/08/nx-s1-5392318/transcript-pope-leo-xiv-speech

There is nothing simple about creating attendance policies. Instructors, rightly, find themselves all over a spectrum of expectations and philosophies, informed by their own experiences as students, their departmental standards, their student population, and their own interest in monitoring learners. I myself have ranged from no attendance policy whatsoever, to point loss for absences, all the way to my current policy, which I’ll discuss below. Regardless, I would suggest that teachers think about two major questions when they have the freedom to craft their own attendance standards. 1. What is the likelihood that an invested student will have to miss class at least once or twice during the semester?This involves analyzing factors like the prevalence of communicable illness (do most of your students live in residence halls where norovirus could sweep through hundreds of them within a month?), the socioeconomic realities (do many students balance school with jobs they need for living expenses? Do they have access to reliable public transit, and if not, how does the need for carpools/rides or the reliability of their personal vehicles factor in?), and family obligations (are many learners parents who would be required to stay home with their sick children?). There’s no simple calculus here, but in general, if it’s likely that even the most earnest students will have to miss class sometimes, one’s attendance policy might need to be more generous. 2. How have I constructed the course and assessments?For courses where each day of class depends heavily on comprehending the materials of the previous day, attendance policies may be a way to incentivize that necessary regular attendance. For courses that circle more than build, an occasional absence may not significantly impact a learner’s ability to meet the larger course goals, and a looser attendance policy might give students a “release valve” to take care of their larger needs every now and then. One semester I found myself stuck after my loosey-goosey attendance policy meant that I regularly had half-full classrooms. I knew something had to change, so I reflected.First, in my context at a small women’s college where we focus on first-generation students, single moms, and undocumented students, I knew that missing class was part of life for my learners. Sick kiddos, broken-down cars, and demanding jobs – some of them full-time – meant that perfect attendance would be rare. It also seemed that my students, who have the incredibly high stress levels that come with all those considerations, get sick more often and more severely. I didn’t want a policy that added more strain on them.Second, my courses are designed to be spirals rather than building blocks; we come back to the same major themes frequently throughout the term, each time from a new angle. I don’t need my students to fully comprehend a concept before we can move on because I know it will come back around and they might latch on better then. This means I can afford some leniency because a student can still perform very well on assessments even if they miss a day here or there.All of this meant that my first instinct wasn’t too far off – a gentler attendance policy works with my content and for my students. But how could I avoid those half-empty rooms? In the end, I did something radical – I asked my students what they thought I should do. I told them that I wanted to incentivize being in class, because a robust learning community makes the content more interesting and memorable, but that I couldn’t countenance a policy that would punish someone for being seriously ill or dealing with a major life event. Within the space of ten minutes, we had come up with a policy that made sense to them and me, and which I currently use. At the start of the term, each student gets a set number of attendance points. If they miss, I take away points… until they prove to me that they’ve caught up on the material. (I record all my classes, so my students watch the video and then show me their notes to get their points back). It’s easier for students to just show up than it is to do the makeup work, but no one’s grade is ever permanently impacted if they have to miss classes. It might not work for everyone, but it makes sense for my courses and context.How have you crafted your attendance policies?

Fear is the anxiety that you are about to lose something you love, need, have rightfully earned or deserve. Fear will make you hurt yourself, silence yourself, edit yourself in ways that contradict or disavow your own best pursuits. Since we teach who we are, showing up afraid will only serve to distort your teaching, raise the apprehension in your classroom and model a sense of distrust. While I understand the impulse to be afraid, we must choose to live unafraid, especially in our own classrooms.Uncertainty has been weaponized. Random acts of callousness have been normalized. Scarcity is being orchestrated. Universities are being pressured in strange and unpredictable ways. The enterprises of education are being guillotined. If there was ever a time that provoked fear, anger, and confusion for those of us employed in higher education — now is that moment. Even so, my hunch is that it is shortsighted to expect that preemptive acts will rescue anyone from the strategies of demolition and anarchy. It is not likely that the fight can be avoided—particularly for those trying to skirt it. While cowering from the fight is an option, we would be foolish to think that cowering from the attack will lessen the challenge. Fear will drive you to attempt ineffective strategies.The other day a colleague emailed the Wabash Center asking that we remove their syllabi from our online collection. They were afraid the contents of their courses would be read as diversity, equity and inclusion materials and did not, given the political climate, want to risk being castigated. I can understand their desire to avoid worry, but removing syllabi from the internet, at best, is misguided. The fact-of-the matter is that nothing is ever actually removed. Why would the colleague think that hiding materials would make them safe? In this climate, compliance has not been met with a cease fire. I recognize that the fearful colleague is following suit with many prestigious universities who have performed an audit of their own websites, purged language of welcome and belonging, then re-languaged their program descriptions for public consumption.  I suspect our safety will depend upon the capacities of our intellectual leaders to decide not to be intimidated. Harvard is leading the way.Today, a colleague teaching at a state university reported that their department chair announced that she had recommended to the provost a 60% cut in the department’s budget. The department chair stated that she hoped that by volunteering the massive budget cut that she would avoid the impending budget fights. Once colleagues were clear that this recommendation was made to preempt the department head from having to fight for their department’s budget, the startle of colleagues shifted to rage. They felt betrayed. When the faculty pressed the department head for a rationale, the department chair explained that because they were close to retirement they were entitled to choose “peace” and avoid the impending university wide budgetary conflicts. Now, the department is waiting in fear. They are afraid that the department head’s wanton actions communicated to the university the lack of importance of the entire department. Wittingly or unwittingly, the timid department head chose to conspire in her own demise. She had not considered the welfare of the community over her own fear-driven impulse to preemptively concede—or maybe she had. Evil takes advantage of self-absorption and is intensified.We do not have the luxury of being afraid if it allows avoidance, silence, or being untrue to our central aims. Values which are easily discarded to avoid a fight might need to be reassessed, but now that crisis is upon us, conceding seems reckless. Safety is not ensured. We must know where we stand before the fight comes.If we are doing our jobs of good teaching, teaching religion and theology inherently cultivates voiced students who critically and imaginatively critique the status quo.  We know there are no dangerous thoughts; to those who would squelch wonder, imagination and freedom, thinking itself is dangerous. If in this moment we waffle on this rudimentary aim of teaching — why did we choose teaching in the first place? And why do we remain in higher education classrooms? Certainly, the individual and collective answers to these questions will matter as we decide our engagement in the vitriolic challenges of this moment. May our fear not become our hallmark. The worst thing we can do is panic and allow our fears to be the guiding force. This morning, I emailed my Associate Directors a copy of Audre Lorde’s The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action. Lorde's speech sheds light on the factors that may cause, in times of trouble, some people to remain silent while enabling others to speak an act. At our next director’s discussion, I am going to begin the dialogue with this Lorde quote:“For we have been socialized to respect fear more than our own needs for language and definition, and while we wait in silence for the final luxury of fearlessness, the weight of that silence will choke us."Together, we will discuss the ways Wabash Center will stand firm in our commitments, and the ways we will steadfastly emphasize our mission of improving teaching, knowing that the aim of good teaching is to provide radical hospitality, to create space for open dialogue and to encourage creativity and imagination for future building. Reflection Questions for Leaders in EducationWhat do you do when you do not know what to do and you are afraid to do anything?What habits and practices (sacred or otherwise) will calm you during extended crisis?Who is your wise counsel in the season of doubt and distrust?How do you work through experiences of unprovoked or unforeseen change?What if the challenge is bigger than your capacity to lead, to teach, to serve?