The Pietist Schoolman

What you might have missed this week, here and elsewhere:

Here

• Why Pietism may have been an obstacle to the development of higher education in some American Christian traditions, plus one exception.
• Three stories of Africans who led revivals in the 20th century.
• The problematic legacy of “muscular Christianity,” plus contemporary Christian ambivalence about athletic competition.
• Reflections on the value (limited) and problems (enormous) of college rankings like those published annually by U.S. News and Forbes.
• The very promising (and semi-profane) start to Carolyn Weber’s spiritual memoir of converting to Christianity while studying literature at Oxford.
• This week in history: the birth of a close relative, the death of a president and an elephant, celebrities who share a name and a profession, and Boston by any other name…

Elsewhere

• Efrem Smith on why the “Black Church today must become a Post-Black church.”
• Scot McKnight asks a big, important question: how do (biblicist) Christians decide which texts to prioritize when Scriptures seem to support both sides of the same theological controversy?
• The best piece of writing advice Don Miller ever received is now one of the best pieces of writing advice I’ve received.
• The firing of an English professor at Erskine College: an illustration of how evangelical schools struggle to manage the tension that seems implicit in the description “Christian liberal arts” college.
• As academic history continues to contract and the popular demand for historical knowledge grows, two historians recommend greater attention to and investment in public history.
• The farewell address of Wheaton art historian John Walford: to First Things, a rebuttal to the “art world’s prohibition of non-ironic religious art.”