The Pietist Schoolman

It’s April 14th, and we Minnesotans are in the middle of a blizzard warning. A perfect day, in other words, for staying inside to read some posts and articles you might have missed during the week.

Here…

• I reflected on the life and legacy of Adam Johnson, a particularly brilliant colleague who died of cancer on Tuesday. (If you would like to contribute to a scholarship fund named for Adam, click here, select “Other” and enter “Adam C. Johnson Scholarship Fund.”)

• I shared a bit of what’s new with my Charles Lindbergh biography project. Here’s the video of the talk I gave on Thursday morning:

• Our department is now offering one of the rarest things in higher education: a major that you won’t find almost anywhere else.

• Is there a crisis in free speech on Christian college campuses? Depends where you are, I said. (No, said Adam Laats, it’s not a crisis. It’s the fulfillment of a promise.)

…There and Everywhere

• It’s hard to think of an era of “fake news” as being in any way a golden age of journalism, but read Linda Villarosa’s longform article on black infant and maternal mortality for a reminder of the power of reporting.

• Last weekend Lynchburg, Virginia was the epicenter of American evangelicalism — or, rather, evangelicalisms. This Vox piece got a lot of attention, but if you really want to understand the differences between the Christian nationalism of Jerry Falwell, Jr. and the progressive evangelicalism of Shane Claiborne, read David Swartz’s field report/historical analysis at The Anxious Bench.

• Then here comes a Midwestern megachurch that defies conventional left/right stereotypes…

• Speaking of… Just in case John Kasich is reading this blog, I think I’ve found an issue that can bring together all Americans behind a 2020 national unity campaign.

• Does Christian democracy have a future in the United States? (Hmm, I feel like someone blogged about this several months before we elected Donald Trump president…)

• Christian pastors like this Methodist minister played a key role in revitalizing the Ku Klux Klan in the early 20th century.

• “Memory is always about the present,” argues one historian in reviewing a new documentary on Confederate commemoration.

• Four reasons why it’s so important to remember the Holocaust.

• Perhaps we can swing by this baker during our next World War I trip in January 2019…

• In recent years there’s been a lot of angst about the future of historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), but a new study found that African American students fare better at HBCUs than at predominantly white institutions.

• I’m not sure I fit into any of the five faculty types described by a recent workload study (sorry: requires a Chronicle subscription) — I’m probably closest to the “Classic” type, except that service is a huge part of my job right now.

• John Wilson has a new gig, writing a column every other Friday for First Things. Fittingly, it opens with a review of two recent books on baseball.

• Finally, enjoy this piece from one of the people who worked on our book, explaining how words “shape us in ways we’ll never fully comprehend. The right words shape us for good and the wrong ones carry with them corruption.”