The Pietist Schoolman

With a nod to the early 1960s satirical British TV program that featured future Monty Python members John Cleese and Graham Chapman and children’s author Roald Dahl as writers, here’s the first installment of our recap of what happened last week here at The Pietist Schoolman and elsewhere around the Web…

The Week Here:

• My friend Sam loves to conclude a meeting by saying that it will be remembered “When they sit down to write the history of [insert department/program/committee’s name].” I can say with near-absolute certainty that when they sit down to write the history of blogging, they won’t mention the first post of The Pietist Schoolman, even though it did manage both to reference the band Cracker and link to a site that was targeted by hackers.
• We previewed some of the general topics likely to recur on the blog, as well as the some of the special series I have on tap for the summer, kicking off last Friday with the virtual version of my planned travel course on World War I.
• And The Pietist Impulse in Christianity might actually be published before the end of 2011.

The Week Elsewhere:

• The literary troika who put out The Christian Humanist Podcast have more than hit their stride as they discuss archeology on episode #51. And I’m not just mentioning/praising them because their blog was the first blog to put my blog on its blogroll. (It’s early, but yes, that’s a personal best for number of times using the word ‘blog’ in a blogged sentence.)
• The second to so honor me is my colleague Chris Armstrong, who was grateful for Jennifer Woodruff Tait’s new book on the shift from wine to grape juice among Victorian Methodists.
• Two takes on contemporary worship: composer Lawrence Mumford dissected its unique strengths and weaknesses; professional traditionalist D.H. Williams found mostly the latter (to absolutely no one’s surprise).
• Roger Olson distinguished between fair and unfair criticisms of Calvinism and Arminianism, and chided some of his fellow Arminians for not always knowing the difference.
• Scot McKnight is back from two weeks in Israel and feeling political.
• One gifted Christian historian interviewed another at the Historical Society Blog.