Other than pondering my potential Lutheran-ness and dropping a #Reformation500 podcast on a world desperately short of both podcasts and #Reformation500 material, I continued to shirk my duties as a blogger committed to giving away multiple posts on multiple topics week in and week out. I’ll try to get back to that next week. Meanwhile, enjoy the fruits of others’ labors:
• I get why some people are irked by the “thoughts and prayers” response to mass shootings, hurricanes, and other awful events. But I think Katelyn Beaty is right that prayer is actually a reasonable, responsible response to such tragedies.
• In other Martin Luther news, I challenged my son to a Reformation board game.
• Or I suppose you could read some of the world’s leading church historians write essays on the meaning of the Reformation. Whatever.
• What do Colin Kaepernick and other NFL protestors have in common with interwar Mennonites?
• How do Christians learn to disagree well, whether about national anthem protests or anything else?
• More than a week old, but still worth reading: before you dismiss white evangelicals altogether, don’t forget about the 19% of us who voted against Donald Trump.
• What’s the place of progressive evangelicals in a reorganized American Left?
• I’m teaching a course on Christian unity this semester. Two student presentations this week explored the “worship wars” of recent decades, but could it be that congregational singing — whatever the style — actually helps unify us? (More on this in my next Anxious Bench post, I think…)
• African missionaries are trying to re-Christianize post-Christian Britain.
• If churches in this country continue to close, at least we know those buildings will continue to be used.
The Pietist Schoolman 