I constructed the lecture, “So, What Are We Professing Here?”; to be provocative, so I am enormously grateful that it succeeded in evoking thoughtful responses from my colleagues in this venture. They raise important issues. The lecture also attempted to move us a small step beyond the tired old dichotomy between a supposed neutral secularism and a despised narrow confessionalism in teaching by positing an intellectual grounding and a civic responsibility for the study of religion. The responses demonstrate, however, how difficult it is to move into that middle ground, pushing me to one side with phrases like “civic religion,’ “unshakable allegiance,’ “siege mentality,’ “share our religious beliefs,” “guru,” and “practicing meditation” (some words in quotation marks that are nowhere in my lecture). I realized, even as I spoke the words, that I risked marginalization in the academy when I used as an illustration “willingness to take a stance as a Methodist Christian or an Ismaili Muslim,” even though only the “Methodist Christian” part was quoted. That statement was in the context of students and teachers being free and able to make judgments—as distinct from holding opinions—about everything one studies from the best edition of a Greek verse to, perhaps, the best way to conduct one's life in a particular circumstance. That does not require propagation of a religion, but it does require careful study and a willingness to make public judgments.