A quiet week for me as I moved on from preaching at one church last weekend to preparing to teach a class on evangelicalism tomorrow at another — and worked ahead on a Chapel talk I’ll give at Bethel next Friday. Elsewhere:
• Secularization theory seems to be on the comeback, but Ross Douthat isn’t persuaded.
• One piece I’ll surely talk about in tomorrow’s adult Sunday School class: Michael Gerson’s argument that “Rather than shaping President Trump’s agenda in Christian ways, [white evangelicals] have been reshaped into the image of Trump himself.”
• If that weren’t true, they’d surely agree that the impeachment inquiry is entirely legitimate.
• Martin Marty wondered if Christians could “resurrect hope in word and action, in a world of nihilism, chaos and passivism.”
• Why “recognizing the Reformation’s African roots has practical implications for the church today.”
• “Twittter’s leading historian” talked about how historians engage social media and study the recent past.
• What is the role of wonder in history and philosophy?
• Like most people I know, I was happy for Washington Nationals (and Montreal Expos) fans when that franchise won its first World Series — though I have to confess, I forgot about the national capital’s Negro Leagues history in repeating the notion that a Washington team hadn’t won a professional baseball championship since 1924.
• Can struggling evangelical colleges learn from the experience of historically black colleges?
• Catholic higher education is wrestling with some of the same problems as evangelical higher ed.
• Fuller Seminary isn’t leaving its Pasadena campus after all.
The Pietist Schoolman 