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• If I had realized that it was going to be my 500th post at The Pietist Schoolman, I would have come up with a better title than “Crowdsourcing and the Practice of History.”
• Two posts on college rankings: one comparing the systems used by Washington Monthly and U.S. News magazine; the second focusing on how Christian and church-related colleges and universities rank using those models. (Stay tuned next week for more on that latter topic…)
• My stable of guest writers is slowly growing: if you haven’t yet, check out Bethel student (and football standout, I didn’t mention before) Jesse Phenow’s reflection on having studied German Pietism last spring in his post-Reformation/contemporary theology class. And if you too would like to write about Pietism or other things for The Pietist Schoolman, just drop me a line at chris (at) pietistschoolman.com.
• Will “9/11” always make us think of Sept. 11, 2001?
There and Everywhere
• Meanwhile, 9/17 has been designated Constitution Day, and the National Endowment for the Humanities is using the occasion to get the ball rolling on celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Among other activities, you’ll have the chance to participate in an interactive discussion of that event with leading historians.
• If nothing else, the liberal arts prepare their students to debate well whether we’re living through the demise or resurgence of that model of education.
• As I’ve always said: if you’re going to keep on the books an obscure state law passed a year after the end of WWI, it might as well create jobs for historians. (H/T AHA Today)
• Another of my aphorisms: bloggers named Christopher are typically right about everything. To wit: “I think the term missional is a helpful one, but these days it is WAY overused. Part of the corrective we need is to use it only to describe activities that are done in conjunction with the local church.” (H/T Nathan Gilmour)
• David Swartz on Lisa Sharon Harper’s rejection of both “Religious Right” and “Christian Left.”
• Egypt’s Coptic Church is getting attention it probably doesn’t want this week, but if your interest has been piqued, here are nine things to know about this branch of Christianity.
• Fifteen years after the passing of Mother Teresa, one of her biographers shared seven things most people don’t know about the not-quite-yet saint (that’s #7).
• One of the findings in my dissertation on American, British, and French efforts to reform German education after WWII was that many of the occupiers were as disturbed by “Prussianism” as by National Socialism. They’d have been none too happy to read an op-ed claiming that “Germans are taking a second look at Prussia….”
• “Weekend Reading” suggestions from our department’s AC 2nd blog touched on the history of risk, the fragility of the caves at Lascaux, and retroactively diagnosing the psychiatric problems of famous individuals.
The Pietist Schoolman 