Here…
• Guess which cluster of undergraduate majors produces the highest MCAT scores and med school acceptance rates.
• The Pietist Option is a finalist for a readers’ choice award. Vote before December 3rd!
• The penultimate episode of season 3 of The Pietist Schoolman Podcast surveyed Protestant Reformations apart from Luther’s. (We’ll take Thanksgiving week off, then wrap up at the end of the month.)
…There and Everywhere
• At The Anxious Bench, I thought out loud about a topic I rarely discuss: spiritual warfare, and its implications for education.
• It’s 2017, not 1933. Why did one in eight Germans vote for a right-wing party whose leader complained that Germany is “inundated by culturally alien peoples”?
• The Museum of the Bible opened in Washington, DC. While some reviews have been downright odd (a museum about one holy book doesn’t focus enough on another?), this biblical scholar seems right to question the premise that “the Bible will speak for itself.”
• Despite being “perhaps the seminal event in the past five centuries of Western history,” why is the Reformation “noticeably underserved by film and television”?
• “95(ish) Theses” for Trump Era Christianity, from a Mennonite Brethren professor.
• I’m afraid that Jim Wallis is spot on in his assessment of the last year in politics: “President Trump is an ultimate and consummate worshiper of money, sex and power. American Christians have not really reckoned with the climate he has created in our country and the spiritual obligation we have to repair it. As a result, the soul of our nation and the integrity of the Christian faith are at risk.”
• Glad to see some more media attention paid to the Christian beliefs motivating some NFL players’ protests.
• As ever, Molly Worthen is a perceptive student of American evangelicalism: “When I sought out conservative and progressive critics of white evangelical politics and asked them how to best understand it, this was their answer: pay attention to worship, both inside and outside of church, because the church is not doing its job.”
• It’s been remarkable to watch so many cases of sexual harassment come to light in the aftermath of the Harvey Weinstein allegations. The latest case involves one of my senators.
• See also Beth Allison Barr’s post on how to eliminate sexual predators from academic conferences. (Sadly, I’ve heard similar stories from some of my own colleagues.)
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