The Pietist Schoolman

I’ll be out of town this weekend, so here’s an early, abbreviated links wrap.

Here…

• This week’s podcast revisited the themes of our book, The Pietist Vision of Christian Higher Education, then applied them to Christian formation in other settings, including churches and homes.

• Elsewhere on the Christian Humanist Radio Network, the Sectarian Review took on David Barton.

• In the process, they had some nice things to say about me, and how I approach the practice of history. As it happens, I had written another reflection on that topic on Monday, one rooted in my experience of eulogizing friends.

• If you do study history, you ought to be a great candidate for any number of jobs in business.

…There and Everywhere

• Kyle Roberts wondered how people would have responded had one, famous, recently deceased Jehovah’s Witness knocked on their door.

• Scot McKnight issued a point-by-point reply to Kevin DeYoung’s list of “9 Marks of Healthy Biblical Complementarianism.”

• How evangelicals respond to questions of human sexuality continued to spark conversation… Popular Christian author and reality TV star Jen Hatmaker called for greater inclusion of LGBTQ people in the church.

• For Katelyn Beaty, the “the response from both sides of the spectrum [to Hatmaker’s post] also highlights how confused we Christians are about the nature of love—the love that God has for us, and the love we are to have for those who don’t know him.”

• And one of its philosophy professors sued Gordon College, saying she was punished for speaking out during the 2014 debate surrounding that school’s stance on sexuality.

• I don’t think that Gordon is on this list, but some activists are wondering why the NCAA hasn’t taken action against colleges that have sought religious exemptions from Title IX language barring discrimination against transgender students.

• Is D.G. Hart asking a good question of evangelical historians: while we (rightly) call out abuses of history from conservatives like David Barton, are we too easy on the religious left?

• As a belated reply to those readers who wondered why I bother to hang on to a term like “evangelical” — even if I might define it differently than others… See Roger Olson’s recent post on the subject.

• Just a few minutes ago I closed a lecture by telling the story of last year’s mass murder at the Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, SC. But while that tragedy unleashing a national conversation about Confederate heritage, the Southern Poverty Law Center reports that there are still hundreds of Confederate memorials around the country.

• Yale University decided against changing the name of a residential college named for 19th century alumnus, former vice president and senator, and legendarily racist slavery apologist John C. Calhoun, but will retitle the faculty who lead those institutions “heads of college,” rather than “masters.”

• At least some significant share of Yale students were unhappy with the Calhoun decision, and suspected that alumni influence and money prevailed. (For the record: this not especially deep-pocketed alumnus thinks Yale should have changed the college name, but kept “master” — which is an academic term that predates slavery in this country by centuries and shows up on two of my degrees from that university.)

• Easy to overlook in higher ed conversations that tend to focus on four-year institutions is the fact that community college enrollment nationwide has dropped 16% from 2010 to 2015.

• The Teaching United States History blog is on a strong run of recent posts, including Glen Olson on teaching the silences (or “negative spaces”) of the historical record.