This week I revisited a mid-1950s Bethel talk about Pietism and considered whether a university like ours can truly satisfy all of its external constituents. Elsewhere:
• My favorite post this week at The Anxious Bench found David Swartz visiting thriving churches in a northeastern city that white evangelicals tend to view as highly secular.
• I’ve previously recommended Daniel Silliman’s new book on evangelical fiction. For a preview, check out his cover story for the new issue of Christianity Today.
• Even rock stars struggle with what it means to be evangelical.
• Is the United States already in the middle of a constitutional crisis?
• American administrations of both parties can treat refugees harshly.
• And authoritarian attitudes — e.g., “preference for social uniformity, prejudice towards different others, willingness to wield group authority to coerce behavior, cognitive rigidity, aggression and punitiveness towards perceived enemies, outsized concern for hierarchy, and moral absolutism” — can be found on the left and the right.
• At the same time, suspicion of higher education has become the province of Republicans… and that’s a big shift from not so long ago.
• Bethel was one of the places the New York Times visited to find out what it was like to go back to school or college as the COVID pandemic continued.
• I can’t believe it’s been twenty years since HBO premiered Band of Brothers…
• How do book designers come up with covers?
• COVID has put my fledgling side hustle as a European tour guide on hold for the foreseeable future, so I was curious to read Rick Steves’ thoughts about post-pandemic travel.
• What’s happened to minor league towns since Major League Baseball took over? Consider the case of my parents’ town in Appalachia.
The Pietist Schoolman 