As Professor Buck faces his looming excommunication, he reflects on his spiritual isolation, feeling abandoned by the community he once called home. He wrestles with anger, questioning whether his lifelong loyalty to the church was worth it, while finding solace in literature and academia. Meanwhile, his students, particularly Scarlett, grapple with their own conflicts—caught between loyalty to their faith and the unsettling realization of its contradictions. As Buck traces the evolution of Jesus’ image from a humble carpenter to a Greco-Roman philosopher, he challenges his students to consider how belief is shaped by history, culture, and power. Ultimately, the question lingers: if Jesus returned today, would he resemble the God we've been worshipping for all of these years—and does it even matter?

Professor Buck is about to face a disciplinary hearing for his perceived apostasy from the Church. He’s calm, though, and even attending Sunday meetings with President Brown—the Church leader overseeing the hearing—in hopes of resolving things. The issue has stirred up public opinion, with some defending Buck and others wanting him excommunicated.

When Buck meets President Brown, the conversation starts pleasantly enough, but there’s an obvious power dynamic. Brown brings up Buck’s controversial book, The Beardless Jesus, which critiques how modern art and Church practices portray Christ. Brown accuses Buck of opposing Church doctrine, though he admits the book is beautifully written.

Buck challenges Brown to pinpoint where the book is apostate. He argues that his critiques of the Church’s art and institutional practices are aimed at inspiring deeper faith, not undermining it. He also emphasizes his years of devotion to the Church and the personal and familial toll this process is taking.

The discussion gets heated but respectful. Buck defends his ideas about authentic worship and criticizes how Christ’s image has been commodified, even pointing out that the famous Christus statue is more Greek art than historical realism. Brown listens but remains firm, setting the stage for a tense hearing.

A continuation of The Beardless Jesus Series:

In a Yale Religious Philosophy Class, Professor Steven Buck lectures on repentance and the evolution of Jesus's image in early Christianity. During class, an older student named Jim Hunt delivers a compelling critique of Facebook/Meta and modern control of perception. Buck connects this to the Greek concept of metanoia (repentance) - changing one's mind.

Scarlett, a student with Mormon roots, learns that Professor Buck knew her grandfather Nolan Stancik as a mission president. She and her friend Peter invite Buck to lunch at Pulse 16, where they discuss the growing tensions between progressive and traditional Mormon thought. Buck describes himself as an "unsettled believer" who still loves attending church despite disagreements.

The evening ends with Buck receiving notice of a disciplinary council that could lead to his excommunication from the Mormon Church. The charges stem from his book "The Beardless Jesus" and his public statements challenging church doctrine. He's given options to either defend himself, renounce his work, or accept excommunication.

Welcome to Part 2 of the Beardless Jesus. In this episode we continue the exploration of the controversial world of Professor Buck, the Yale academic challenging traditional Mormon perspectives with his groundbreaking lecture series and bestselling book "The Beardless Jesus".

We follow Scarlett as her faith journey unfolds, grappling with intriguing questions: Did Jesus have a beard? And more importantly, does it matter?

Through field trips to the Yale Art Gallery, discussions of Renaissance art, and connections to biblical history, this episode explores the intellectual curiosity surrounding the historical Jesus, its impact on religious inquiry, and the search for truth in unexpected places.

When Scarlett attends a lecture by the unconventional Professor Buck, she’s challenged to reconsider long-held views on biblical teachings, cultural practices, and her own religious upbringing.

Along the way, she discovers that her professor was actually a Mormon missionary, long ago, who served with her grandpa. As she considers new ideas she faces the internal conflict of a loss of certainty.

Sandra learns about the beardless Jesus—who was a Nazarene but not a Nazarite—and how this revelation shifts her understanding of Mormon thought and theology and her place in its world.

"Scarlett sat in stillness, quietly considering this new figure of Jesus. A beardless Jesus? That didn’t sit well with her. She had heard the stories from her youth—the Prophets had seen Jesus and knew what he looked like. And wasn’t there a painting of Jesus in her chapel, dressed in a red robe, that they said looked like the actual Jesus? Like the painter had contacted the prophet and asked him what Jesus looked like, and then painted him based on that description?"

Rather than celebrating the wonders of the journey, The Journey of the Magi presents it as an arduous and painful experience. The poem opens with five lines adapted from a passage in the Nativity Sermon delivered by Lancelot Andrewes, the Bishop of Winchester, to King James I on Christmas Day, 1622. Andrewes’ original text reads:

“A cold coming they had of it at this time of the year, just the worst time of the year to take a journey, and specially a long journey. The ways deep, the weather sharp, the days short, the sun farthest off, in solstitio brumali, the very dead of winter.”

This opening sets the tone, introducing the magus’ recollection of a journey fraught with discomfort and doubt. The speaker describes how, throughout their trek, a voice persistently whispered that “this was all folly.” When they finally reach the infant, the magus seems underwhelmed by the child yet profoundly aware that the Incarnation has fundamentally altered the world.

The speaker reflects:
“…were we led all that way for
Birth or Death?”

The birth of Christ, he realizes, marked the death of the old world—of magic, astrology, and paganism. Speaking in his old age, the magus admits that the birth not only ended his way of life but left him with little to do but await his own death.

During the journey, the Magi witness “three trees against a low sky.” This single image is rich in symbolism, hinting at both the historical future—the crucifixion, an allusion to a pivotal biblical event—and the spiritual truth of what is to come. The lowering skies suggest heaven opening, foreshadowing the transformative significance of Christ’s life and death.

“When I undertook to write a memoir of the late Empress of Austria, I was fully aware of the great difficulties I should encounter, especially as the material I had collected from various quarters was enormous, and I felt it to be my duty to sift it thoroughly and to select only such parts as I could myself believe to be authentic.

I have personally had the happiness of meeting the illustrious lady who is the subject of my sketch. I have seen her on many occasions and followed with interest the vicissitudes of her life for the last thirty years. I have often had occasion to write about her and have also had the privilege of knowing some of those who were in her entourage, and who, from time to time, have given me news, anecdotes, and reminiscences of the woman they loved with all their heart and soul.”

The first Thanksgiving happened a bit differently than most of us might imagine. The Pilgrims’ first governor, William Bradford, endured a profoundly challenging beginning to his time in Plymouth. Before even stepping foot on shore, he suffered a devastating personal loss. His wife, Dorothy, tragically drowned after falling from the Mayflower while it was anchored in Provincetown Harbor. Not long after, Bradford himself narrowly escaped death when he stumbled into a deer trap—a reminder of the dangers they faced in their new and unfamiliar environment.

Bradford’s initial impressions of the Indigenous peoples were far from warm. In fact, he harbored deep mistrust, reflecting the tension and uncertainty of their first encounters. His account, written in Of Plymouth Plantation, captures the harshness of their arrival and his perception of their situation:

*"Being thus arrived in a good harbor and brought safe to land, they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of heaven who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element.

But here I cannot but stay and make a pause, and stand half amazed at this poor people’s present condition; and so I think will the reader too, when he well considers the same. Being thus past the vast ocean, and a sea of troubles before in their preparation, they had now no friends to welcome them, nor inns to entertain or refresh their weather-beaten bodies, no houses or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succor.

It is recorded in Scripture as a mercy to the Apostle and his shipwrecked company, that the barbarians showed them no small kindness in refreshing them, but these savage barbarians, when they met with them (as after will appear) were readier to fill their sides full of arrows than otherwise. And for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of that country know them to be sharp and violent, and subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel to known places, much more to search an unknown coast."*

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It was said in 1896 about this poem that it "reaches the ear and holds it, and through it touches the heart. About the author Yeats it was said: "There is no younger poet of our time in whose future fame one may feel a stronger faith."

The poet found inspiration in Thoreau’s life, particularly his solitary experience at Walden Pond. Just imagining that isolation helped the poet escape his homesickness and transported him to a more comforting and pleasant state of mind.