The Pietist Schoolman

This week I mourned a friend who died too young, wrote about the 100th birthday of “Western civ,” preached and taught for Reformation Sunday, and interviewed a college football coach who sees his work as a ministry. Elsewhere:

• I’ll post the full text of my sermon (on Psalm 46) at The Anxious Bench this Tuesday, but one key idea is that God’s refuge and strength is experienced in the midst of the world, not as a “mighty fortress” removed and protected from it. Here’s how one local Lutheran church has lived out that idea.

• Likewise, here’s a Christian case for participating in public schools.

• Kristin Du Mez explained to John MacArthur that his problems went well beyond being dismissive of Beth Moore.

• Jerry Falwell, Jr. may have lost his most highly respected professor to a Southern Baptist seminary, but apparently he made a famous new (and newly Christian) friend.

• It’s unlikely that white evangelicals will stop voting Republican in 2020, but those who are Hispanic…

• One progressive Christian wondered if his tribe’s propensity for “righteous anger” was increasingly crossing the line into “something ugly and, well, decidedly regressive.”

• One Catholic priest’s parish: the Washington Nationals.

(Speaking of my favorite sport… Baseball might not be facing a crisis in popularity after all.)

• Whatever the problems of Christian democracy, I’d still rather see its resurgence than the rise of European populism.

• “Today our democracy is more perfect,” said one former Spanish prime minister after the government relocated the remains of dictator Francisco Franco from a public mausoleum to a private cemetery.

• What can historians learn from a famous study of cannibalism?

• Between David Brooks and The Atlantic, the economics of tipping had its moment in the sun this week.

• The Boston Globe looked into that $75 million gift to Gordon College.

• Before we decide that liberal arts colleges are doomed, let’s try out this philosophy professor’s idea.

• I haven’t yet listened to the new Wilco album, Ode to Joy, but one Christian critic decided that “The joy God gives doesn’t sound that far afield from what Wilco gives voice to.” (In any event, this video is hilarious.)