Here…
• Whether in the flagship magazine of American evangelicalism, a leadership magazine for Pentecostals, or among our readers on Amazon, the reviews of The Pietist Option have continued to be encouraging.
• About 60% of my readers say that their church is doing something special to commemorate the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation.
• As our #Reformation500-themed third season of The Pietist Schoolman Podcast continued, Sam and I talked about the medieval Christianity that a medieval Christian named Martin Luther sought to reform.
• The phrase “Judeo-Christian” was back in the news. Did you know that it originated in the anti-fascism of World War II, not just the anti-Communism of the Cold War? (Thanks to Mennonite World Review for picking up this post!)
…There and Everywhere
• You probably noticed the #MeToo phenomenon on social media this week. My Anxious Bench colleague Kristin Du Mez shared her own story of being sexually harassed, and explained why this issue is a problem for Christians.
• Paul Putz continues to do excellent work at the intersection of religion and sports: this time offering insight into the relationship between Christian sports ministries and protests by African American football players like Colin Kaepernick and Eric Reid.
• For someone who last year wondered what had become of the “serious Christian intellectuals who occupied a prominent place on the national stage,” Alan Jacobs is pulling off a pretty good imitation of a serious Christian intellectual who occupies a prominent place on the national stage. (If the Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic count as such a platform.)
• Justin Taylor shared a helpful overview of how religious historians are rethinking the development of evangelicalism in America.
• Meanwhile, Scot McKnight became the latest evangelical to “bury” that term.
• Sensitive to its “association with violence and destruction,” a Nazarene university dropped Crusaders as the nickname of its sports teams.
• If nothing else, the 500th anniversary of the Reformation should prompt us to consider its many aftershocks: including the ways in which Adolf Hitler and his supporters exploited Luther’s legacy.
• Looking for a way to teach your kids about the Reformation? Try this book from Eerdmans.
• When I was a senior in high school, my favorite book was Harry Turtledove’s Guns of the South. Such alternative histories, wrote Renee De Groot, “have always been meaningful reflections of the ambiguous way American society looks back on its civil war.”
The Pietist Schoolman 