I have larger misgivings about moving more and more of higher ed online (which I’ll explore soon), but this talk given earlier this fall found me beginning to explore its costs and benefits in light of my experience teaching a fully online Western Civ course last summer. This past summer my colleague Sam Mulberry and … More Best of The Pietist Schoolman: A Field Report from the Digital Frontier
Here… • Rest in peace, Nelson Mandela. • Would Pietists have embraced C.S. Lewis as much as evangelicals, Catholics, Mormons, and others have? • Can Christian churches (and colleges) tackle the challenge of becoming multi-ethnic if they haven’t learned to bridge differences within racially similar communities (e.g., class and gender)? (See also Ed Stetzer’s reflection … More That Was The Week That Was
As you’ve likely heard by now, the South African statesman Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela died earlier today at the age of 95. The reaction has been overwhelming; I’ll just sample a few responses. “Our nation has lost its greatest son,” lamented South African president Jacob Zuma. F.W. de Klerk paid tribute to the man whom was … More RIP Nelson Mandela (1918-2013)
If we haven’t learned how to be a healing station for the people who are racially similar, then we’re never going to learn how to be a healing station for the people who are racially dissimilar. (Christena Cleveland) Even if it means that I don’t catch up on the reading in European and diplomatic history that I should … More “Beyond Multiethnic” Church – and Christian Colleges?
‘Tis the season for media old and new to trot out their “best of” lists for the soon-to-conclude year. As I did in 2012, I’ve been working on collating some such lists into a Christmas gift-giving guide for history buffs. In the process, I’ve been heartened to find a few academic historians garnering praise for … More Academic Historians On (and Off) Year-End “Best of” Lists
If you want to sound like you’re a serious, forward-thinking educator these days, you’d best master a couple of facile cliches: (1) speak derisively of the “sage on the stage” in order (2) to exhort colleagues to embrace “student-centered, active learning.” To help yourself convey the proper degree of disdain for the lecture, think back … More The Value of the “Sage on the Stage”
Here… • Part two of my Evangelical Theological Society paper on David Swartz’s Moral Minority argued that its most important chapter was its least (North) American one. • Is it particularly hard to rank Christian colleges as opposed to their secular peers? • I took a three-day break from formal blogging, but I did spend … More That Was The Week That Was
11/27/13 – We’ll be taking today, tomorrow, and perhaps Friday off from blogging. Meanwhile, consider joining me in reading Robert Tracy McKenzie’s The First Thanksgiving over the holiday break. (See reviews by Thomas Kidd and David Swartz to understand why.) Or at least check out this and other Pilgrims-related posts at Tracy’s admirable blog, Faith … More Happy Thanksgiving!
It’s about as unlikely as a question as you’re going to see over an article in The Atlantic: “Is it possible to judge a school’s ability to encourage deeper religious faith?” But that’s what appeared this morning above a piece by freelance writer Ruth Graham, who started by confessing that she sometimes wonders whether my … More The Challenge of Ranking Christian Colleges
The second half of my paper delivered last week at the Evangelical Theological Society, arguing for a more international and transnational approach to the history of evangelicalism. A Global Reflex in Evangelical Historiography Earlier this year the newsletter of the American Historical Association (AHA) published a study by Luke Clossey and Nicholas Guyatt finding that, … More The Global Reflex: An International Historian Appraises David Swartz’s Moral Minority (part 2)
The Pietist Schoolman 