That Was The Week That Was

Posted on by Chris Gehrz

This week I explained the dedication to my new book, introduced a new seminar I’m teaching in the fall, and explored a religious consequence of America entering WWI. Elsewhere:

• Either to read right now, or to save for the 20th anniversary of 9/11: this wonderfully reported long-form piece on that tragedy’s effects on one family is a profound reflection on memory, grief, death, life, and love.

What was left of the World Trade Center, a week after the attacks — U.S. Navy/Wikimedia

• I’m not sure how one becomes a professor of both journalism and pediatrics, but it apparently leaves you very well prepared to write about the contemporary relevance of a disease rarely seen anymore in this part of the world.

• As German chancellor Angela Merkel concludes her historic tenure, it’s a good time to look back at what happened to the 1.2 million refugees from Syria and other war-torn countries that Germany accepted under her leadership.

• According to the 2020 U.S. Census, over half of American counties decreased in population over the last decade… and almost all of them backed Donald Trump.

• I get the feeling that I’d enjoy talking to Cornell West more than any other prominent progressive.

• It’d be great if many more historians could offer a class like this in their churches.

• This summer I’ve started to attend in-person worship again, while my wife and our (not-old-enough-to-be-vaccinated) kids continue to watch church on YouTube. Like Collin Hansen, I hope the latter mode is only a temporary accommodation.

• Evangelicalism may already be split… and that’s not necessarily bad news.

• Apart from Chick-fil-A, I did not realize how many fast food “chains have roots in two pillars of 20th-century conservatism: Christianity and free markets.”

For example, the California-born chain In-N-Out Burger developed connections with Calvary Chapel in the 1960s – Creative Commons (Chris Yarzab)

• Gordon College is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court the state court decision in favor of a social work professor allegedly kept from promotion because of her views on human sexuality.

• Meet the Christian college students who are helping an interfaith group address COVID vaccine hesitancy.

• Crusaders has become a less and less popular sports team nickname at Christian colleges… but few have a basketball program as prominent as that of the latest school to make that change.

• The Tokyo Summer Olympics are done; the Paris games are on the clock. And the latter will be much less expensive than the former.

• I enjoyed the Field of Dreams game as much as any baseball fan, though I couldn’t help thinking that Dyersville, Iowa isn’t all that far away from the Minnesota town where an MLB-owned factory is closing — with sixty of its jobs moving to China.