If one has lived a life of input, consuming book after book after book, what is the distillation for output? In 1998, I was offered the opportunity to deliver a sermon —any sermon, my choice. I thought that would be the first, last, and only such opportunity. What then should be the content? The sermon that resulted was what I observed as predominant about religion in America:
"Intellectuals are Truly Neglected Sheep."

My message of disenfranchisement from faith because of intellectually unacceptable formulations went over well. I was asked back once a month for a year. Consequently, the initial exercise—to determine what one has learned that is important enough to share—now had to be repeated a dozen times. Then, as requests followed from Unitarian Universalist fellowships around the state, topics had to be chosen over the next ten years. What to say?

The essays in this collection are the result. They are not arranged in a chronological but in a thematic order. My second talk was on Islam, as we should learn more about the youngest and most rapidly expanding monotheistic religion. Current events prompted other topics: the pope issued a surprisingly nondogmatic encyclical; a California Appeals Court ruled the pledge of allegiance unconstitutional; Bill Moyers' interviews of Joseph Campbell on "The Power of Myth" repeated on PBS; and U.S. military actions in Afghanistan and Iraq resuscitated Augustine’s just-war principles. Gender issues had emerged in graduate school while studying the polemics of medieval Church Fathers. Other topics simply reflect my theological mentors (Teilhard de Chardin and Thomas Merton) or my favorite provocations (gnosticism and quantum physics).

What is evident in my choice of topics is some analytic leverage on the dumbing down of faith and the uncritical acceptance of the "master story" as received truth, particularly when rooted in biblical literalism. Under the sacred canopy of Judeo-Christian culture, some of us need more intellectual breathing space.

The title of this collection reflects the many ways that faith is misused and abused. Confusing metaphors of faith as facts of history is one such "sin of faith." Preference for belief over nonbelief, is another as is the assumption that all beliefs are equal. Sins of faith exist in power battles between nations and when people don’t think beyond the beliefs they were taught as children. Such sundry sins of faith are illustrated in these essays.