If you had better things to do and somehow missed my book talk at Boston College, now you can read (for free!) an essay adapted from it in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal Religions. Here is the link. Or get the PDF here. (Note: To my knowledge, the essay has nothing to do with the Grim Reaper on the journal’s cover.)

I gave the talk as one of three plenary speakers for Growing Apart: The Implications of Economic Inequality, an interdisciplinary conference sponsored by Boston College’s Jesuit Institute last year. The other plenary speakers were Senator Elizabeth Warren and Dr. Shaji George Kochuthara of Dharmaran College in Bangalore, India. Senator Warren opened for me. (Not really. But technically speaking, she did go before me. On another stage. On another day.) In the talk, I discuss my concept of the “morality of grace,” among other things.

In unrelated news, for a long while now I’ve been meaning to post the audio of a radio interview I did on the Matt Townsend Show. At last, here it is. In our conversation, I talk about my Atlantic article “The Spiritual Crisis of the Modern Economy.”

Here is an essay I wrote about what I think the Trump administration is likely to do for/to the working class. (It was originally published on the University of California Press’s blog and republished on In The Fray.) An excerpt:

In his pronouncements from the bully pulpit, [Trump] has made it clear that he is about America “winning”—as he personally, through his attainment of extravagant wealth and fame, believes he has done. But the pursuit of a Trumpian American dream of materialism and self-interest will take us even farther from the civic-minded ideals of the early republic. As rising inequality stamps out opportunities for rags-to-riches stories of success, and the Trump administration’s promises to working people prove to be worthless, that narrow dream of national greatness may, in fact, take on another, darker meaning: as George Carlin put it, “It’s called the American dream ’cause you have to be asleep to believe it.”

You can read the entire essay here.

I was featured on an hour-long segment of The Joy Cardin Show, a call-in news program on NPR-affiliated Wisconsin Public Radio. We discussed some of the themes of my recent Atlantic essay and my book, such as how changes in the modern economy are hurting workers, especially those without a college degree (who still account for two-thirds of Americans over twenty-five). It was interesting to hear from the callers, a few of whom talked about how America’s elites look down on the working class. You can listen to the audio here.

I’ve written a piece for The Atlantic about the hollowness of our modern economy and the effect it has on the working class. Here is an excerpt:

The modern economy privileges the well-educated and highly-skilled, while giving them an excuse to denigrate the people at the bottom (both white and nonwhite) as lazy, untalented, uneducated, and unsophisticated. In a society focused on meritocratic, materialistic success, many well-off Americans from across the political spectrum scorn the white working class in particular for holding onto religious superstitions and politically incorrect views, and pity them for working lousy jobs at dollar stores and fast-food restaurants that the better-off rarely set foot in. And when other sources of meaning are hard to come by, those who struggle in the modern economy can lose their sense of self-worth.

You can read more here. At the moment (before more Trump news pushes it off), it’s on The Atlantic‘s front page.