For years after King’s death, many white Christians continued to eye him with suspicion, even as families like mine proudly displayed his portrait on our walls. Today, in an era when all fifty U.S. states now observe the King holiday and a resplendent monument to the man stands in our nation’s capital, it’s difficult to … More Birmingham Revolution: How to Silence a Prophetic Voice
Here… • What’s the Evangelical Covenant Church? Answer #2: “an immigrant church,” both rooted in Swedish-American history and being reshaped into a truly multiethnic body. • I started a new series on the newest book from ECC communications director Edward Gilbreath, about Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” …There and Everywhere • We’re starting … More That Was The Week That Was
It feels a bit eery to carry a book about Martin Luther King, Jr. around the city where he died, but during a trip to Memphis last weekend, I had the pleasure of reading Edward Gilbreath’s Birmingham Revolution: Martin Luther King Jr.’s Epic Challenge to the Church. It’s given me plenty to think about, enough that I want … More Birmingham Revolution: MLK’s “Great Epistle to the Church”
In my day job as a history professor, I’ve spent a lot of time in the past week investigating the experience of immigrants during World War I. And since most of the faculty and students at Bethel in 1917-18 were either born in Sweden themselves or the children or grandchildren of such immigrants, I’ve also been thinking about my own … More What’s the Evangelical Covenant Church? “An Immigrant Church”
7/5/14 – I’ll be traveling again this weekend, so we’ll take a week off from our usual Saturday links post. But if you don’t quite know what to do with the extra time, I’d strongly recommended you check out my summer blogging project, Bethel at War, 1914-2014, where this past week I wrote about everything from nativism … More No Links This Morning
Yesterday afternoon I had the pleasure of visiting a new member of our church. At one point in the conversation, I looked over and noticed that she had a copy of Pietisten sitting open next to her couch. And that reminded me that I’ve failed to do my bit to publicize the release of that estimable journal’s Spring/Summer 2014 … More Now Available: The Spring/Summer 2014 Issue of Pietisten
So what’s this small but fast-growing denomination called the Evangelical Covenant Church? When I asked Facebook friends from the Covenant to suggest a sentence or two, I received several suggestions. I won’t repeat them all, but two common themes emerged. Most everyone appealed to figures or slogans from European history, and they described the Covenant as a group of people, … More What’s the Evangelical Covenant Church? “Missional Pietists”
6/30/14 – Having spent the weekend with hundreds of fellow members of the Evangelical Covenant Church at our annual meeting, I’m excited to take up last week’s question of how I’d explain what’s distinctive about our denomination to others. But before I launch that series (probably tomorrow), let me encourage my readers to check out a … More Check Out Theoloqui!
A week that began with me celebrating my third anniversary blogging as The Pietist Schoolman ends with just a quick links wrap today, as I’m in the middle of attending the annual meeting of the Covenant Church. Next week I’ll come back to my question about that denomination… What's the @Cov_Church? "Missional Pietism," says @ECCprez … More That Was The Week That Was
Tomorrow I’ll be taking an early morning flight from Minneapolis-St. Paul to Chicago, where I’ll represent my congregation at Gather ’14, the annual meeting of our denomination, the Evangelical Covenant Church. “What’s the Evangelical Covenant Church?” at least one person just asked. (“Why would anyone attend a denominational annual meeting?” asked someone else — or maybe the … More What’s the Evangelical Covenant Church?
The Pietist Schoolman 