That Was The Week That Was

Posted on by Chris Gehrz

Last week it was all Reformation, all the time here at The Pietist Schoolman: my fame as the cartoon voice of a singing Martin Luther continue to grow; I tweeted my way through the Reformation; I suggested three ways to remember the Reformation on its 500th anniversary; I connected a couple of news stories about Lutheranism in the Global North and Global South; and our newest podcast considered whether sola scriptura and Christian unity could fit together.

Fortunately, others were writing about non-Reformation topics:

Johnson, If I Give My Soul

• I missed it when it came out this summer, but I was fascinated to read about If I Give My Soul, Andrew Johnson’s book on “prison Pentecostalism” in Brazil.

• That country was also the setting for Sarah Pulliam Bailey’s Reformation Day story, on the Prosperity Gospel.

• Sadly, it’s hard to be surprised anymore when you see news of another mass shooting in America — even if it takes places at a Baptist church. Kyrie eleison…

• Apropos of nothing… Kristin Du Mez suggested that American Christians need to think more about the pervasiveness of sin.

• Still, perhaps I should be more optimistic than I am about the potential for Christian unity.

• Or I shouldn’t be.

• It doesn’t get the attention of other religious freedom debates, but Emma Green found that zoning law is at the heart of many such disputes.

• The progressive, LGBTQ-affirming Christian case against rating churches based on how clearly they state their views on sexuality.

King University student center
Student Center at King University in Bristol, TN – Wikimedia

• Declining enrollment caused another Christian college to lay off employees, including nine full-time faculty positions.

• The proposed tax overhaul making its way through Congress is mostly bad news for anyone connected with higher education — though I can’t say I’m all that bothered by the idea of taxing the mega-endowments of schools as vastly wealthy as my graduate alma mater.

• Fake news alerts! One of the country’s leading gurus in history education found that professional historians aren’t much better than undergraduates at evaluating information online.