A very busy week at this blog and others. Let’s dive in! Here… • I’m grateful to Jared Burkholder, for suggesting a moratorium on attempts to identify “true” Islam and for helping to make possible my upcoming visit to Grace College. • There was lots of good conversation around one of the biggest stories in … More That Was The Week That Was
In the past week or so, I’ve seen a fair amount of new traffic for a two-year old series I ran on the history of colleges and universities closing. Perhaps interest was stimulated by the news that the board of directors of Sweet Briar College voted to close the school at the end of this academic year, … More When Colleges Close: Sweet Briar
I don’t normally use The Pietist Schoolman for Bethel business, but this morning I’m going to pass along an announcement via our department blog: We’re happy to announce that we’ve begun a job search for the newest member of our faculty: a gifted, innovative teacher committed to the mission of Bethel and able to straddle the fields of ancient/medieval and digital … More Ancient-Digital: Announcing Our Department’s New Search
One of the ablest defenders of the liberal arts, in a time when many question their value, is Wesleyan University president Michael Roth. Indeed, before becoming an administrator, Roth was trained as an intellectual historian, and he still finds time to teach in that field. Last month he wrote an essay for the Wall Street Journal probing his students’ hesitation whenever he … More Am I “Making Religious Believers” Out of My Students? (part 1)
3/4/15 – Episode five of Past & Presence is one of my favorites because it gave us an excuse to go back to Bethel’s old campus across from the Minnesota State Fairgrounds, now home to the Hubert Humphrey Job Corps Center. (Note to self: next time you decide to visit property of the federal government, check in with security before setting … More Past and Presence: A Usable Past
I’m happy to announce that five weeks from today I’ll be in Winona Lake, Indiana to speak to the faculty of Grace College about our book on Pietism and Christian higher education. Readers of this blog may know Grace best as the academic home of our regular guest-blogger Jared Burkholder, who played a key role … More Taking Our Book on the Road: Grace College
Here… • Welcome back to blogging, Jared Burkholder! • If you read Jared’s return post, you’ll notice a plug for a Pietist Vision event coming up… I gave less subtle plugs on behalf of myself for an April visit to Messiah College and my appearance on the podcast Christian Humanist Profiles • Our newest Past & Presence webisode inspired a … More That Was The Week That Was
One of my favorite aspects of producing our department’s weekly webisodes is that it has afforded our faculty the chance to film conversations about our discipline. All have been interesting, but the one we posted yesterday stood out: my conversation with Americanists Diana Magnuson and AnneMarie Kooistra about historical evidence and research. As usual for these conversations, … More Paper Clips as Relics, or Historical Research as an Encounter with the Sacred
2/25/15 – I think that the fourth episode of Past & Presence, our department’s new webisode series, is our best yet. Not only do we interview an alum who parlayed his History degree into a corporate VP position, visit the oldest Swedish Baptist church in Minnesota, preview our Modern Middle East course, and hear from a student who spent the fall … More Past and Presence: Primary Sources
2/23/15 – I’m quite sure I have no business being admitted to any intellectual club whose membership includes Stanley Hauerwas, Merold Westphal, and John Milbank. So it was beyond kind of Nathan Gilmour to interview me for the newest episode of Christian Humanist Profiles, one of several terrific podcasts produced by the prolific team of Christian Humanists. We touched on several chapters … More Listen to My Interview on Christian Humanist Profiles
The Pietist Schoolman 