David L. Weddle

David L. Weddle is Professor Emeritus of Religion at Colorado College (Colorado Springs, CO), who lives in Woodland Park half-way up Pikes Peak. He taught courses in comparative religion, ethics, philosophy of religion, and American religions, and has published articles on those subjects as well as two books: the first was on the American revivalist, Charles Finney, and the second twenty-five years later on miracles in Hinduism, Judaism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. (At least, I can't be accused of flooding the market!) The first, and often only, question people ask me about the second book is "Do miracles really happen?" My academic answer is that it is impossible to prove that miracles are impossible. My personal answer is that "miracle" is a way to describe a wondrous and totally unexpected gift--and who hasn't had occasion to celebrate such grace? My third book has just come out from New York University Press. It compares the practice of sacrifice in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam as a way of signifying faith in what transcends the worlds of nature and human culture--much like belief in miracles. The textual model of sacrifice for those traditions is the patriarch Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son at God's command. My take is that sacrifice can be a noble gesture of forfeiting private interests for the good of others, but it carries ominous danger when used to sanction an imagined ideal that must be imposed on others. Sacrifice as the exchange of possessions, pleasures, autonomy, and even life itself for utopian abstractions is always a bad bargain. When out of the study, I love the challenge of fly-fishing (though it doesn't throw me into spiritual rapture, like some enthusiasts). But I do think artificial flies are like ideas: useful as lures and dangerous as hooks.