This week I wrapped up my devotional series on “The With-God Life,” shared some wise words from one of my favorite historians, started a new podcast exploring the importance of the liberal arts in the middle of a pandemic, and considered Christian responses to the polio scares of the 1950s. Elsewhere:
• I mentioned C.S. Lewis’ “Learning in War-time” in the introduction to our Pandemics and Liberal Arts podcast. Here’s another take on the same sermon, and how it “[challenges] us to be thoughtful about what it is we should think about when we choose not to focus on the crisis at hand.”
• We’ll likely focus on philosophy in the next episode of our podcast. One philosopher wrestled with how we make meaning of a virus whose only purpose is to reproduce itself.
• It’s probably wishful thinking, but right now I’m okay hoping that COVID will help more people realize how much they need the humanities.
• I especially hope that’s true of college administrators and college students… but right now the former are mostly worrying that there’s not going to be enough of the latter next year.
• Is the coronavirus revealing the problems inherent in “the long American history of declaring ‘war’ on any conceivable enemy — whether physical, abstract, domestic or foreign”?
• But the history of one non-metaphorical war might teach us something about mourning the dead in a pandemic.
• One way that people are coping with COVID: reading, watching, and listening to old favorites.
• Another strategy: baking bread. (That’ll be the subject of my next post at The Anxious Bench.) But it can be hard to find an essential ingredient for those recipes.
• Before Easter Sunday moves from expectation back to memory, consider Valerie Cooper’s perspective on the importance of resurrection in the black church tradition.
• A new survey finds that most Christians are complying with shelter-in-place orders, even on Sunday mornings. But evangelicals are disproportionately represented in the minority that is continuing to worship in person.
• More and more I find myself linking to posts by Bonnie Kristian, whose new column for Christianity Today explained the problem with invoking religious liberty protections in support of large-scale religious gatherings.
• Liberty University is being sued by students who claim that the school is trying to profit off of the coronavirus.
• One of America’s oldest, most influential megachurches picked its new senior pastor.
• Do half of all Americans think that the Bible should influence this country’s laws?
• The president of the oldest seminary associated with the country’s largest Protestant denomination changed his mind about Donald Trump. Jonathan Merritt explained why flip-flopping has been the hallmark of Al Mohler’s career.
• This is admittedly morbid, but… I’m not sure we’ve ever had a presidential election with two candidates this old… in the middle of a pandemic. So what happens if Trump or Joe Biden dies during the campaign (or after Election Day)?
The Pietist Schoolman 