In between podcasting about gender and sports and preparing a chapel talk on Pietism, I enjoyed the following articles and posts this week:
• By far the most-discussed Anxious Bench post this week was David Swartz’s reflection on the difference between “cosmopolitan” and “populist” evangelicals.
• I’ll be sorry to see David Heim (r.) no longer at the helm of The Christian Century. Interestingly, his successor as managing editor has an evangelical background: a Wheaton College education and a stint at Sojourners.
• With Liberty playing BYU this afternoon, the Deseret News did a nice piece on football at Christian universities. (Keep your eyes peeled for a Pietist Schoolman cameo!)
• The largest Christian university not named Liberty might not be able to convert to non-profit status after all.
• Does Paula White’s new role in the Trump Administration demonstrate that Pentecostalism has entered the mainstream?
• Only in the Southern Baptist Convention could Al Mohler be seen as a “middle path” candidate for denominational leadership.
• Speaking of middle paths… Tish Harrison Warren suggested that if American Christians could recover a via media, we might “hold our convictions passionately yet humbly” — and even “reweave the fabric of our civic discourse.”
• Meanwhile, a particularly conservative and controversial Reformed church plans to take over a town in Idaho.
• Church planting has come to the Church of England.
• During a chapel talk at Azusa Pacific University, preacher and author Francis Chan announced that he will be going to Asia to serve as a missionary.
• The origin story of Thailand’s most ubiquitous dish has a surprising political dimension.
• On this 30th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down, check in on Germany today, where identity is more conflicted than ever.
• Could the Equal Rights Amendment finally be ratified, almost fifty years after it passed Congress?
• If you’ve been eager to watch the Tom Hanks-as-Mr. Rogers movie coming to theaters, then read this reminiscence by the actual writer whose friendship with Fred Rogers inspired the film. It’s a surprising and eloquent plea for civility.
The Pietist Schoolman 