Thanks to a hectic week, I only had a chance to share a tribute to my grandfather and to announce the Amazon Prime premiere of a new documentary on Pietism. I’ll be back to my usual blogging pace next week, but in the meantime, here are a few other links from around the blogosphere:
• One of the best pieces you’ll ever read on the importance of church came from a writer for The Handmaid’s Tale: “Church isn’t an escape from the world. It’s a continuation of it. My family and I don’t go to church to deny the existence of the darkness. We to go to look so hard at the light that our eyes water.”
• We’re to the point in our book editing process that we can’t really make significant changes… which is a shame, since I’d love to incorporate Patty Bruininks’ research into our chapter on hope.
• What does it mean to hold power as followers of Jesus?
• Like John Fea, I’m part of the #19Percent.
• I like both John McCain and Bernie Sanders, but neither had a great week in committee hearings.
• So the president of Liberty University won’t be leading a higher ed task force after all. [UPDATE, Sunday, 6/11: a White House official contradicted this report, though details remain scant.]
• But the Trump presidency is turning out to be a good thing for another conservative bastion in higher ed.
• More bad news for the undergraduate history major…
• I’ll admit to feeling differently about Robert E. Lee than I do about other Confederate leaders… but this Atlantic piece on Lee was pretty devastating.
• The strange case of a canceled sports history course at the University of North Carolina.
• Berlin is debating whether or not to restore a cross to the cupola of its City Palace — with supporters including a socialist theologian and local Muslim leaders.
• David Swartz returned to The Anxious Bench with an interesting reflection on his experience doing sabbatical research in Thailand.
• David also joined me and others at the Bench in sharing some of our favorite historic sites for summer travel.
The Pietist Schoolman 