The Pietist Schoolman

Here…

• You can add “fledgling Charles Lindbergh biographer” to my résumé.

• If you want to see the Pietist option in practice, visit an Evangelical Covenant congregation like Abbey Way of Minneapolis, MN or Vox Veniae of Austin, TX.

• Coming across an essay by the ECC’s “first female theologian” helped me think through the relationship between mission and friendship.

…There and Everywhere

• About a year ago, Philando Castile was shot by a policeman during a traffic stop not far from my house. Yesterday, a jury acquitted the officer. One of the more thoughtful responses to that controversial verdict came from the president of Minnesota’s leading evangelical organization.

• After a false start, the Southern Baptist Convention overwhelmingly condemned the racism of the “alt-right.”

• Is the Southern Baptists’ new Bible translation “gender inclusive” or “gender accurate”?

• In a week that a left-wing Trump critic shot a conservative Congressman, it seemed a good time to ask why “Democrats and Republicans truly think worse of each other, a trend that isn’t really about policy preferences.”

• I don’t know if he can really generate or lead a centrist alternative, but I still enjoy Evan McMullin.

• Tim Farron, Britain’s highest-ranking evangelical politician, alluded to his faith in explaining his decision to step down as leader of the Liberal Democrats “To be a political leader – especially of a progressive, liberal party in 2017 – and to live as a committed Christian, to hold faithfully to the Bible’s teaching, has felt impossible for me… I seem to be the subject of suspicion because of what I believe and who my faith is in. In which case we are kidding ourselves if we think we yet live in a tolerant, liberal society.”

• Does the case of secular Australia show the need for a “Thessalonian” alternative to the Benedict Option?

• After receiving initial regional accreditation, Bob Jones University inched closer to “[joining] the higher education mainstream.”

• Drew Gilpin Faust will step down after one more year of serving as Harvard’s president.

• He’s not convinced that another Harvard historian was right to connect America’s founding to the Paris Climate agreement, but John Fea thinks Sen. Ted Cruz fails to understand that the future United States “were part of a larger transatlantic world that influenced the course and success of their Revolution.”

• I really appreciated Beth Allison Barr’s Anxious Bench reflection on handling a personal crisis in the middle of an academic year.

• One high school English teacher is living my dream.