The Remarkable Career of a Young Academic (to the tune of "The Vicar of Bray")

When I got out of graduate school,
I applied to a Christian college,
Where I found it was the golden rule
To integrate faith and knowledge.
Worldviews that did with this conflict,
I poked 'em full of holes, sir;
And my concern was very strict
To save my students' souls, sir.

Refrain: And to this rule I shall agree
Until I am a wraith, sir;
That whoever shall give a job to me,
I'll sign their statement of faith, sir.

When tenure time was coming round,
My prospects seemed uncertain.
So I took myself to Baptist ground
And turned my Wesleyan shirt in.
Now I professed with shining face
Security eternal,
And those who added works to grace
I damned to fires infernal.

Refrain

But  when I got a research grant
To study natural law, sir,
The merits of the Catholic stand
Immediately I saw, sir.
The Eucharist I now embraced,
Sola fide was deception;
And I proclaimed with steadfast faith
Th'Immaculate Conception.

Refrain

But when my monograph came out,
And Harvard came a-wooing,
Church dogma I began to doubt,
'Twas all Pope Benedict's doing.
So I made myself a shining name
In the field of gender studies,
And wrote some essays to great acclaim
About transsexual bodies.

Refrain

Now I was tenured, safe and sound,
After much toil and grieving;
I thought it was high time I found
What truly I believed in.
My great surprise I still recall
When I looked into my soul, sir,
To find there was nothing there at all,
Not even a God-shaped hole, sir.

Refrain

The Two Messengers

Perhaps to the clear-eyed angel
There was nothing in the word he brought but glory:
Infinite splendor in a point of flesh,
Bursting, breaking through the veil of blood and mucus,
Passing through a narrow gate
To fill creation with redoubled light.

Only the old man, his rheumy eyes
Blurred with false hopes,
Back scarred by Roman rods,
Feet hard with trudging up the stony hill
To watch the heroes die,
Only he, perhaps, could taste in his body the sourness of the sweet word,
Could see the sword quivering in the stainless heart,
And know in what bitter way the glory comes.